Delay causes of the site-clearance process for public infrastructure projects in Vietnam: Differences across roles and project sizes

Site clearance remains one of the most persistent causes of delay in Vietnam’s public infrastructure delivery, yet systematic evidence on how different stakeholders and project sizes perceive its underlying drivers is limited. This study investigates variations in stakeholder perceptions and project-scale effects on site clearance delays through an integrated analytical framework combining ranking, concordance, correlation, and variance analyses. Data were collected from key actors involved in land acquisition and clearance, including project owners, project management units, consultants, contractors, and land development centers, covering small, medium, and large public projects. Findings show that stakeholders share a general awareness of major delay causes but differ in prioritization based on institutional roles and responsibilities. Project owners, management units, and contractors emphasize coordination and staffing constraints, whereas consultants focus on technical and procedural issues, and land development centers view administrative and community challenges as routine. Across project sizes, perceptions diverge more strongly: small projects face capacity and resource shortages, large projects experience bureaucratic fragmentation and complex multi-agency coordination, and medium projects operate at a relatively balanced scale. These results indicate that project complexity increases nonlinearly with size, amplifying administrative and procedural burdens at both extremes. The study contributes by clarifying how institutional role and project scale shape perceptions of delay in Vietnam’s infrastructure sector. It underscores the need for scale-sensitive and role-specific management strategies to enhance the timeliness and effectiveness of site clearance processes.