Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management Studies

Abstract Rework is one of the factors that always affects and jeopardizes the productivity of construction projects. With the increasing growth of urbanization in recent decades, provision of housing has become one of the most significant problems in Iran. The construction industry is faced with substantial problems, such as high costs of project delivery, poor financial performance, and inability to provide value to customers ahead of schedule. This paper aims to prioritize the reasons behind rework delay in terms of contractor, employer, and third party using the framework proposed in a real case study on the freeway projects in Iran. First, a number of well-known delays in freeway construction projects are considered using available theoretical resources, and then the importance of each of these criteria are identified using the stepwise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA) method. Based on the importance obtained by the SWARA method, the contract suspension index with the importance of 0.110 and the weather index with the importance of 0.043 are the most and least important factors in delays due to rework, respectively. Subsequently, by the importance identified, the reasons behind delays due to rework are determined using the weighted aggregated sum product assessment (WASPAS) method. According to the obtained results, the reasons for delays due to rework are prioritized. Based on the obtained results, employer ranks first, contractor ranks second, and the third party ranks third. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is carried out on the importance weights of the factors, and it can be seen that the prioritization of the causes of delays due to rework does not change with the increase in weights of the indicators.