"Case Study – Owner’s Evaluation of Contractor’s Delay and Damages" by Pradip Mehta and Tom Papachristos

Abstract: This case involved a claim by contractor which alleged that Owner delayed his work due to numerous design changes introduced during the course of construction. The contractor submitted four different Time Impact Analysis (TIAs) that primarily included impact of various RFIs.

Owner representatives perform independent expert analysis. The experts concluded that contractor's TIA was flawed and did not consider impact of RFis based on contemporaneous schedule updates. Furthermore, our independent analysis of contemporaneous records indicated that 90 percent of RFis were either bogus, or resolved before the alleged impact occurred, or they did not impact critical path. The remaining 10% of RFis did impact the critical path due to design modifications. However, contractor was not able to demonstrate owner's exclusive culpability for delays during the period the alleged impact occurred. Expert’s analysis indicated that the delays due to the design modifications were co-mingled and intertwined with contractor's poor execution and performance during that time period on separate critical path activities. As a whole, expert recommended contractor's entitlement to only 5% of the total claim. This presentation includes the delay methodology and damage analysis used by experts in this case.