Establishing Who Caused a Delay Before It Becomes a Dispute

Delay analysis sounds like something for lawyers and experts. The first four steps are ordinary project work, and doing them early usually settles the question.

Delay analysis answers one question: which events moved the completion date, and who was responsible for them. Formal methods exist and experts apply them, but most of the work is assembling records that either exist or do not. An owner who builds that record as the project runs rarely needs the expert.

Before stage one

You can only analyse delay if you have three things: an accepted baseline programme, monthly updates showing actual progress, and dated correspondence. If any of the three is missing, the first step is not analysis but reconstruction, which is expensive and produces a weaker answer. Put the record keeping in place at mobilisation, not when the argument starts.

• The accepted baseline programme with its acceptance date.
• Every monthly programme update issued since, kept as separate files rather than overwritten.
• A single correspondence file for the project, including messages sent through messaging applications.
• Site diaries or daily reports covering labour, plant and weather.
• Dated photographs of the works, ideally from fixed positions each month.

Stage 1: Fix the window you are analysing

Define the period under examination and the programme version in force at its start. Analysing a whole project at once produces arguments. Analysing month by month against the update that was current at the time produces answers, because it uses what both parties knew then.

• Deliverable: A list of analysis windows with the programme version applicable to each.
• Owner: Owner representative or project manager.
• Approval gate: No conclusions drawn until the windows and programme versions are agreed.

Stage 2: List the delay events, not the delay

Break the claim into individual events with dates: an instruction issued, an approval returned, a delivery missed, a suspension, a design query unanswered. A contractor claim for twelve weeks is not analysable. The nine events inside it are.

• Deliverable: An event register with dates, descriptions and the document that evidences each one.
• Owner: Contractor, verified by the owner side.
• Approval gate: Every event supported by a dated document before it is assessed.

Stage 3: Locate each event on the programme

For each event, find the activity affected and check its float at the time. An event on an activity with float consumed protection only. An event on a zero float activity moved completion. This single step disposes of most inflated claims.

• Deliverable: A table mapping each event to its activity, float at the time and effect on completion.
• Owner: Programme reviewer, independent of the contractor if the sums are material.
• Approval gate: No payment discussion until the time effect of each event is established.

Stage 4: Allocate responsibility event by event

Assign each event to the party the contract makes responsible for it. Be honest about your own approvals and instructions, because an analysis that awards you every point will not survive review and will damage your credibility on the points you are right about.

• Deliverable: The event table with a responsibility column and the contract clause relied on.
• Owner: Owner representative with the adviser.
• Approval gate: Owner caused events acknowledged in writing rather than quietly omitted.

Stage 5: Deal with concurrency openly

Where events from both sides affect the same period, say so and quantify the overlap rather than picking whichever cause suits you. Concurrency is the most argued area in delay claims, and a position that ignores it is the easiest to attack.

• Deliverable: A short statement of concurrent periods and the treatment proposed for them.
• Owner: Owner representative, reviewed by a licensed adviser.
• Approval gate: No final determination until the concurrency treatment is stated.

Stage 6: Issue a determination and adjust the date

Grant the time the analysis supports, refuse what it does not, state your reasons and record the new adjusted completion date. A clear determination narrows the dispute even when the contractor disagrees with it, because it forces their response onto specific events.

• Deliverable: A written determination with the revised completion date and reasons for each event.
• Owner: Owner or engineer, per the contract.
• Approval gate: Determination issued within the period the contract allows.

Handovers between stages

The handover that ruins delay analysis is the change of site staff. When the engineer who saw the events leaves, their knowledge leaves with them unless it was written down at the time. The second is the move from project team to adviser: an adviser handed a box of unsorted messages will spend most of their fee building the record you could have built for nothing.

How you know it is finished

The analysis is finished when every event has a date, an owner, a float position and a stated effect on completion, and when the adjusted completion date is recorded in one place both sides can see. That document, not the argument around it, is what protects you if the matter goes further.

Domira designs, builds and manages projects across Saudi Arabia for owners who are based abroad: land appraisal, feasibility, design, construction, handover and asset management under one accountable contract. Send us the plot or the brief and Domira will put the numbers in front of you before you commit.