Our latest blog post looks at the 2009High Court judgement: Costain Ltd v Charles Haswell & Partners Ltd [2009] EWHC B25 (TCC), through the lens of ‘distributed projects’.  The fundamental problem identified in this judgement was caused by the distributed nature of the project work.

The Critical Path Method (CPM) assumes there is one best way to accomplish the work of the project, whereas in distributed projects there are multiple different ways the work could be accomplished. Consequently, any delay analysis technique based on the assumption that a sequence of work shown in a CPM schedule is the only way to accomplish the work is unlikely to prove the delay.  In this case, Costain failed in its claim for time related prolongation costs and only recovered the additional costs of installing the piled foundations, because as the Judge stated at Clause 235: “In the absence of any analysis between all the operative delays from the start to the finish, which is absent in this case, in my judgment it is simply not possible for the Court to be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the assumption upon which this part of Costain’s case depends, is correct”.

Obviously, a different approach is needed and we are working on this challenge. Read the full post and links to other resources at:  https://mosaicprojects.wordpress.com/2023/03/25/costain-vs-haswell-revisited/