Recovering 6 months delay and £2m cost

We were commissioned by one of the UK's leading independent engineering and services businesses to lead their recovery of time delays and associated costs on a higher education project. The scope of work was split into a new build and refurbishment element, and there were 50 sectional completion dates agreed in the subcontract. Our client’s final account submission deadline was imminent, and the extension of time request was not substantiated.

Our approach

Given the extent of their history on the project, we immediately built rapport and understanding with the operational and commercial teams on the project as their knowledge and documents would be crucial to our collective success.

We worked with our client’s planning team to undertake a delay analysis. Due to the significant number of sectional completion dates and the interrelationship between the sections, the analysis was challenging. A review of the programme identified a complex adjustment of critical paths, shortening of programme bar tasks to mitigate delay and continually changing completion dates through the history of the project.

We worked with our client to ascertain the delay events and, once these were established, we collated the records to evidence the event, identified the relevant contract clause that gave our client entitlement, and we valued the loss and expense. This information was included in a claim document and submitted to the main contractor with the final account.

The outcome

The claim document was split into three distinct parts: new build issues up to the date of a particular instruction; new build issues after the date of a particular instruction; and refurbishment. We managed to substantiate 275 calendar days and £2m loss and expense which we presented to our client and explained the strengths and weaknesses of their claim. This provided our client with a strong platform to negotiate a final account settlement.