Concurrent Delays, an everlasting dilemma in Construction contracts

Delays are inherent in almost all projects across a variety of industries. The construction industry would probably stand out as the most prevalent due to the extent of the implications that delays have on communities, politics, and public policies.

Numerous attempts have been made by project management practitioners to develop standards, guidelines, and protocols to address the concurrent delay. Project teams and contractors will always try to minimise (if not eliminate) uncertainty, but project risk will always be an integral part of a project’s life cycle.

While dealing with delays and claims has always been an intricate problem for contract administrators, Owners, and Contractors, concurrent delay has made it even more difficult to process delay claims.

Delays can occur in parallel (concurrently) with each other and overlap during the course of a project. Concurrent delay, as it pertains to delay claims, occurs when delays are not all attributable to one party to the contract. Technically speaking, there are excusable and non-excusable delays that can overlap each other (i.e., happen concurrently).

Owners and Contractors have always tried to take advantage of ambiguities around the definition of concurrent delay to counter any claims made by the other party when it comes to assessing Extension of Time (EOT) claims made by the Contractor.

This focus is of course driven by the Contractor’s desire to mitigate loss and damages from finishing a contract late (typically referred to as Liquidated and Ascertained Damages (LAD)).

In the past few decades, there have been numerous papers and publications on this subject that are of great value. This article intends to portray a simplistic perspective of the everlasting dilemma of concurrent delay that would hopefully help wider groups of project stakeholders in the comprehension of the concept.

Download the article here.