Construction industry plays great roles in the development of any country in transforming the aspirations and the needs of its people into reality by implementing various physical structures. This study was analyzed different causes of public construction delay, and determines how critical delay causes are most influential in project progress. The objectives are to identify the most significant causes and the associated effects of delays in public construction projects in Ethiopia and to make overviews for possible future action related to the problem. The study is limited to cause and impacts of delay in public construction works only at randomly selected construction projects. This study adopted a mixed research design and two data collection methods i.e. questionnaires and semi-structured interviews (phone and in-person). As a result, purposive, snowball sampling techniques were applied. Using Structural Equation Modeling [SEM], this study examined relationship between 48 variables [41 factors and 7 effects], previously identified as contributing to public construction delay in the Ethiopian construction industry and the effects consequences of this delay. As per the path analysis with IBM SPPS Amos 23 a β-value (intercept estimate) the most dominant factor of Contractor related_CR factor ‘Shortage of contractor’s materials on site is estimated to be 3.405. On the other hand, External related_EX factors ‘Environmental factors’ have the least influence on delays in the construction field with a β-value of 3.132. And also this study identifies effects of delay on public construction projects found in Ethiopia as (from the most dominant effect to least effect); (1) Time overrun, (2) Cost overrun, (3) Dispute between parties involved, (4) Arbitration, (5) Litigation and court case, (6) Total abandonment of the project, and (7) Wastage and underutilization of resource. The researcher recommends to the scholars who want to conduct such study in the future needs to give time and do all iteration separately on the private construction sector. The findings of this study will contribute to enhancing the good awareness and the government/client at large by disclosing the core problems on the delay magnitude assessment and collection procedures to enable them to put their effort into success over the observed problems.