A delay claim asks for relief when the project finished, or will finish, later than planned for reasons that aren’t the contractor’s fault. Delays generally fall into three buckets:
- Excusable and compensable: owner-caused (late design, late approvals, owner changes, differing site conditions). Time and money.
- Excusable, non-compensable: neither party’s fault (force majeure, unusual weather). Time only.
- Non-excusable: contractor-caused. No time, no money, and liquidated damages may apply.
Concurrent delay, where owner and contractor delays overlap, is often treated as time but no money for either side, depending on the contract and jurisdiction.
The claim has to show the delay hit the critical path. That’s usually done with a time impact analysis: insert the delay event into the schedule and show how far completion moves. Float matters, since a delay that only eats float may not extend the end date.
Why it matters
Delay costs add up fast: extended general conditions, idle equipment, escalation and home office overhead. Contracts set strict notice and documentation requirements, and missing them can waive the claim entirely.
Worked example
Illustrative: a late structural RFI response stops steel erection for 12 working days on the critical path. Extended general conditions are $5,500 per day, so $66,000, plus a 12-day time extension. If no-damages-for-delay applies and is enforceable, only the time is recoverable.
Common mistakes
- No contemporaneous notice.
- Claiming total-time without critical path analysis.
- Daily logs that never mention the delay.
How os.construction handles it
We’re building RFIs, change events, daily logs and the schedule on one record so the timeline behind a delay claim is already assembled. It’s in development.