Causes of construction cost and time overruns: The 2010 FIFA World Cup stadia in South Africa

The FIFA World Cup is the largest international sports event in the world. Hosting the FIFA World Cup remains a sought after goal for any country. Due to the magnitude of spectators and scale of participation the hosting of the event requires substantial investment in infrastructure, especially the stadia where the various football games will be played. The award of the 2010 FIFA World Cup to South Africa resulted in ten stadia to be either upgraded or newly constructed for the event in South Africa. Even though all the stadia were ready for the tournament, nearly all projects experienced time delays and cost overruns. This article investigates the reasons or causes of cost overruns and time delays during the upgrading and construction of the various stadia. A three-tier research approach covers a comprehensive literature review on the causes of cost overruns and time delays on construction-related projects globally as well as an investigation into the factors that caused cost overruns and time delays on six of the stadia. Finally, the results for the global and stadia projects are compared. The results indicate that the increase in material cost is the single largest contributor to cost overruns for both global and stadia projects. With respect to time delays the most significant contributing factor for global projects was late delay in payments while for the stadia projects design-related factors caused the most delays. The results provide valuable information on the unique challenges facing those who are interested in investing or managing construction projects in South Africa.