The major issue that every construction firm across the globe faces is the delay in project completion. It prolongs the project completion and leads to many direct and indirect losses to the company and the parties involved. Delay in project completion can be due to many factors. In this study, an attempt has been made to spot the major serious factors that tend to delay the progression of residential construction projects in Chennai. From the past studies, 39 critical factors were identified and were grouped under 6 categories. A questionnaire survey was conducted with these factors and the data collected from 105 respondents were evaluated to rank the factors based on the severity index (SI). The results show that ‘Delay in the release of payments by the owner’ ranks top among the factors with SI value of 0.67 and ‘Introduction of new rules and regulations by the government’ ranks the least among the factors with SI value 0.28.