Chapter 33 Exercises — Claims, Disputes, and Delay Analysis

Do these with the chapter open and a calculator. Several produce artifacts worth keeping, because the format is the skill: a delay analysis is not a paragraph, it is a table that adds up.

Difficulty legend: ⭐ basic · ⭐⭐ applied · ⭐⭐⭐ advanced judgment · ⭐⭐⭐⭐ research and extension

Selected answers appear in Appendix J. Numeric answers here sit inside <details> blocks. Work them first.

⚠️ Nothing here is legal advice. Entitlement, concurrency doctrine, damages recoverability, and notice requirements vary enormously by jurisdiction and by contract. These problems teach you to build and test an analysis; what it is worth is your counsel’s question.

Part A — Conceptual Understanding ⭐

A1. Name the three proofs from §33.2 in order, state what happens to a claim that clears two of the three, and say which one genuinely cannot be repaired after the fact.

A2. The five parts of a notice provision are trigger, period, content, recipient and copies, and form and delivery. For each, write the question you would answer from your own contract at buyout.

A3. Explain the difference between excusable and compensable. Give one delay that is typically excusable but not compensable, and one that is typically neither.

A4. In your own words: what is the difference between delay and disruption? Give an example of a project disrupted but not delayed.

A5. Without looking, name as many of the five delay-analysis methods as you can, then check §33.4.1. For each, write the one data input it cannot function without.

A6. State the structural point of §33.4.1 in one sentence: what do four of the five methods require that the fifth does not, and what does that mean for a contractor who stopped updating in month four?

A7. Define literal and functional concurrency, give the Northgate example of literal concurrency from §33.5.2, and say why the distinction is about money rather than vocabulary.

A8. What does it mean to say an activity "consumed float but did not cause delay," and why is that the most useful sentence available in a concurrency argument?

A9. List the four predicates typically demanded before a total cost method claim is entertained, and explain the circularity §33.6.4 identifies in the modified total cost method.

Part B — Applied Analysis ⭐⭐

B1. A subcontractor tells you: "The owner's inspector shut us down for nine days. We're owed nine days and $47,000." Write the four questions you would ask before agreeing with any part of that sentence, and say which of the three proofs each one tests.

B2. Your contract requires notice within 21 calendar days of the event. On day 40 you discover that a condition beginning on day 5 has been costing money the whole time, and you did not recognize it until day 38. Show how the three candidate trigger dates produce three different answers — and state what you do on day 40 regardless of which governs.

B3. An owner writes: "We acknowledge the delay, but our contract contains a no-damage-for-delay clause, so your remedy is a time extension only." Without giving legal advice, describe what you do next: three things you ask counsel, and one thing you look for in the record yourself.

B4. Kestrel's change order form for a $46,000 scope addition carries a full-and-final release covering "all direct, indirect, impact, delay, disruption, and acceleration costs, whether known or unknown." You are mid-way through an unrelated 60-day owner delay. Write the two-sentence transmittal you would send with the signed change order, and say why a note in the margin is not a substitute.

B5. Meridian's consultant argues that Kestrel's medical-gas rough-in was concurrent with the late shielding drawings in Window 2. Describe the four-minute test that settles it, name the single document it comes from, and state what the answer was worth.

B6. A masonry subcontractor claims 31 days and $186,000 for your alleged failure to provide access to the east elevation. Your instinct is to look for the reason it is wrong; §33.8 says resist that. Explain why — in terms of your own negotiating position, not fairness. Then name the two of §33.10.1's five pursuit costs that appear on no invoice, and say why being invisible makes them systematically underweighted.

Part C — Calculations and Deliverables ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

C1 — Classify eight delays ⭐⭐

Assign all three labels to each event: critical or non-critical, excusable or non-excusable, compensable or non-compensable. Where the classification depends on a fact you were not given, say so and name the fact. Assume a standard changes-and-delay clause, an abnormal-weather provision (time only), and no no-damage-for-delay clause.

Then: which two rows change classification entirely without contemporaneous float data, and which single row changes without timely notice?

C2 — The concurrent period and what it costs ⭐⭐

Willow Street Community Center. Extended general conditions $1,600/CD; liquidated damages $1,200/CD; combined exposure $2,800/CD. The job finishes 26 calendar days past the contract date. Two delays, both critical the whole time they are live:

• Delay X — the City's water utility takes until day 17 to approve relocating the existing 8-inch water main. Live days 1–17.
• Delay Y — your masonry subcontractor is short four masons and a tender. Live days 12–26.

1. Partition the 26 days into three sub-periods and classify each.
2. State the time extension and the number of days liquidated damages attach to.
3. Compute the extended general conditions recovery.
4. Compute the contractor's own exposure on the days it owns.
5. State what changes if masonry carried 8 CD of total float on day 12 — and name the document that decides it.

C3 — The windows analysis Curtis Boone could have run ⭐⭐⭐

The counterfactual. Below are the three monthly updates from Rivermont Elementary School #12 that do not exist — months 6 through 9 of a twenty-month job, the stretch where his record goes silent. Suppose he had run them.

Rivermont rates: field general conditions $2,100/CD as claimed, $1,940/CD audited for this period; district liquidated damages $2,500/CD. Projected substantial completion is stated in calendar days past the contract date.

• Window 1. Critical path: district-furnished technology racks → low-voltage cabling → ceiling grid and closeout. The racks arrive 9 days after the accepted-schedule date. The next-nearest path (site paving) carried 22 CD of float and used 3.
• Window 2. The critical path shifts to the kitchen. The district's committee runs the kitchen equipment package through a third review, releasing it 8 days late; the hood opening in the roof stays open throughout. In the same window Curtis's ceiling-grid subcontractor runs 3 days behind on an activity carrying 9 CD of total float at the month-7 data date.
• Window 3. The critical path shifts again, to resilient flooring → gym equipment → substantial completion. Curtis's flooring subcontractor pulls its crew to another job for 9 days. Nothing owner-caused is live on the critical path.

Do five things. (1) Build the apportionment table. (2) State the extension supported and the extended field overhead at both rates. (3) Apply the §33.5.3 tests to Window 2 and state your conclusion with the float figure you relied on. (4) State which methods this record makes available and which it does not. (5) The consultant working from Curtis's actual record could establish 19 compensable days across the entire twenty-month job. Say in two sentences what the difference is and what it is called.

C4 — Extended general conditions at $5,150/CD ⭐⭐

Northgate. A later three-window analysis establishes a 31-calendar-day slip: 15 CD compensable, 4 CD excusable non-compensable, 12 CD non-excusable.

1. Compute the extended general conditions claim at the stipulated $5,150/CD.
2. Compute the extension supported and Kestrel's exposure on its own days at $10,650/CD.
3. Now suppose the rate were not stipulated. Using §33.6.2's four approaches, compute each, given: audited general conditions actually incurred across the 15 compensable days = $71,900; total general conditions in the GMP = $2,900,000 over 565 CD; and a percentage approach applying 7.25% to the $40,000,000 direct cost of work spread over the contract duration.
4. Rank the four by defensibility, say which you submit, and compute what your choice costs against the highest number.

C5 — A measured mile, stress-tested ⭐⭐⭐

Northgate. Halcyon Electric (Devlin Achebe's crew) installs branch conduit and wire. Both periods come from Halcyon's own payroll and daily quantity reports.

Fully burdened electrician rate: $79.00 per man-hour.

1. Compute each period's unit rate in LF/MH, the percentage productivity loss, the hours the impacted work should have taken, the lost hours, and the dollars.
2. Write the three strongest attacks an opposing consultant will make, and the honest answer to each.
3. Normalize: the imaging and surgery wing carries 18 percent more devices per linear foot. Adjust the baseline, disclose the adjustment, recompute.
4. State what the disclosure cost and why you make it anyway.

C6 — Evaluate a claim made against you ⭐⭐⭐

Cardinal Mechanical (Sofia Marchetti) submits $214,000 and 26 calendar days for out-of-sequence access and rework around the CO #14 imaging-suite work.

Run the §33.8.1 sequence in order and produce a one-page internal evaluation: the notice check and what it disposes of; an honest entitlement position in writing; the causation questions you will ask of their schedule analysis; a damages audit naming four tests including the classic double-count; your concurrency position; your exposure if you are wrong; and a settlement range with a walkaway. Then write the four sentences you would say to Sofia, and test §33.8.2's claim that conceding what she is right about costs you nothing you were going to keep.

C7 — Pursue, negotiate, or absorb ⭐⭐⭐

A claim prepared at $620,000 on a completed project for a repeat public owner. Honest settlement range $185,000–$265,000. Build the §33.10.2 table for four paths at a 12 percent cost of capital:

Compute expected value, discount it, subtract the cost to pursue, and net each path. Recommend one, name the two facts that would flip your recommendation, and write the sentence you would put in front of your CFO.

Part D — Judgment and Ethics ⭐⭐⭐

D1. Your project executive says: "Our claim is worth $300,000. File it at $900,000 — that leaves room." Make the argument against in dollars rather than in ethics, using the mechanism in §33.12. Then write the two sentences you would actually say, given that the executive outranks you.

D2. Eleven months after substantial completion you find a folder of daily reports that were never filed — real, contemporaneous, and helpful. You also find that your field engineer has "cleaned up" six of them in the last two weeks, adding delay notations from memory. Describe exactly what you do, in order, in the next two hours. Then explain what those six have done to the other, untouched reports, and why the answer is worse than "six reports are now unusable."

D3. You are the owner's representative. The contractor's claim is genuinely worth about $340,000 and you know it — and you know they cannot fund a two-year arbitration. Your CFO suggests offering $95,000. Name what is being leveraged, argue both sides, state the line you would hold, and estimate what that practice would cost your organization over ten years.

D4. §33.12 calls Curtis Boone's model the residue of a business model rather than a plan, and Ray's argument against it is not primarily ethical — it is that it loses. Using the ledger the book keeps on him ($153,000 unrecovered on the soils claim, $562,100 net on the coordination decision, eleven cents on the dollar on the final claim), make that argument in one paragraph to someone who bids the way Curtis bids and is proud of it. Then say what you would change first if you were handed his job on Monday.

D5. A subcontractor in a dispute over a $90,000 backcharge tells your superintendent they will not repair a defective handrail anchorage until the backcharge is resolved, "because fixing it looks like admitting it." Write what you say, what you do, and in what order. Then explain why §33.4.3's safety alert treats this as both a claims problem and a safety problem — and why the sequence of your two actions matters more than either action.

Part M — Mixed and Interleaved Practice ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

M1 — with Chapter 25 and Chapter 26. Turn the seven-row record comparison in §33.4.3 into a weekly one-page operating standard: what gets produced, by whom, on what day, and the acceptance test for "done." Then price it at a loaded $85/hour and compare against Wei Chen's fifty-six hours and Curtis's $467,000.

M2 — with Chapter 14 and Appendix B. A six-activity network has a 20-day critical path. An owner-caused event delays activity D — which carries 6 days of total float — by 9 days. Compute the new project duration and the compensable delay. Then answer the question that decides the money: why is the answer neither 9 nor 0? Finally, state what a time impact analysis would insert, and into which schedule.

M3 — with Chapter 31. CO #14 cost $186,400, substantiated $121,000, settled at $142,750, left $43,650 unrecovered. Re-run that as a claim rather than a change order. Which proof does the $43,650 fail on? What single practice applied on the first of the four undocumented days changes the number, and by roughly how much? Then say why converting the shortfall into a claim after settlement is almost certainly foreclosed, and name the document that forecloses it.

M4 — with Chapter 20 and Chapter 28. Curtis ran two labor cost codes for an entire $22.4 million job. Design the minimum cost-code structure that would have made a measured mile possible at Rivermont Elementary: how many codes, the unit of measure for each, and what makes a code usable for a disruption analysis. Then name the two additional fields the daily report must carry — and say what "worked on site" costs when it appears eighty-one times.

M5 — with Chapter 29 and Chapter 32. You carry $340,000 of pending change orders unanswered for ninety days, and your month-6 update projects a 22-day slip. Write the one-page position paper you would take to the owner's representative at the field level — not a claim, a position paper: the schedule position, the cash position, the decisions you need and by when, and the sentence that makes the owner want to solve it. Then say what §33.10 predicts this paper is worth relative to the same paper written in year three.

M6 — with Chapter 5 and Appendix G. Build a notice register: one row per notice-bearing clause in a real contract, with trigger, period, required content, recipient and copies, delivery method, and the consequence of lateness as written. Mark the rows where the consequence is waiver versus an obligation to show absence of prejudice. State which row you would negotiate first and what you would ask for.

Part E — Research and Extension ⭐⭐⭐⭐

E1. Obtain the current Society of Construction Law Delay and Disruption Protocol and the current AACE International recommended practice on forensic schedule analysis. Read the portions on method selection and on concurrency, then write 1,000 words on where they agree, where they differ, and what each says about the relationship between method and available records. Go to the documents; quote nothing from this book. Note the edition and the date — both have been revised and will be again.

E2. Find a real construction contract you can access — your employer's form, a public agency's general conditions posted with a bid package, or a published standard form. Read the claims article, the notice provisions, the delay clause, the changes clause, and the dispute resolution article. Produce a two-page decoder: what starts each clock, how long you have, who receives what, the consequence of lateness, the delay-analysis method required for a time extension, how concurrency is treated if at all, and the required dispute sequence. Note the jurisdiction, and note that your answers do not transfer to another one.

E3. Find out how your jurisdiction treats no-damage-for-delay clauses, and whether any statute limits them on public work. The answer is frequently not what practitioners assume. Document it, cite the primary source, date it, and write one paragraph on how it would change the way you price a public bid there. Then do the same for one neighboring jurisdiction. If the two answers differ, you have just learned this chapter's most important lesson without anyone having to tell you.