Chapter 33 Quiz — Claims, Disputes, and Delay Analysis

Twenty-one questions. Answer each one before you open the explanation. Looking first feels efficient and teaches you nothing, and this is material you will need to produce under pressure in a room where somebody is arguing with you. Scoring guide at the end.

None of this is legal advice. Several answers below describe typical treatments that vary by jurisdiction and by contract.

Multiple Choice (10)

Q1. A contractor establishes airtight entitlement under the changes clause and produces invoices proving $94,000 of extended field overhead, but cannot show that the owner's act moved the completion date. The claim is worth:

A. Roughly two-thirds of $94,000 B. $94,000, reduced for the schedule uncertainty C. Essentially nothing on that element D. A time extension plus $94,000

Answer

C. The three proofs are gates in series, not a scorecard. Failure at any one ends the claim, and there is no partial credit for two out of three — the money does not flow at 67 percent. This one fails at causation, which §33.2.2 identifies as the hardest gate and the only one that genuinely cannot be repaired after the fact.

Q2. Which delay-analysis method does not require contemporaneous schedule updates?

A. Windows / contemporaneous period analysis B. Time impact analysis C. Impacted as-planned D. Collapsed as-built

Answer

C — impacted as-planned. It inserts delay fragnets into the baseline and recalculates, so it needs only a baseline and a list of events. That is also why it is the weakest and most frequently rejected: it ignores what actually happened and assumes the baseline was achievable and that nothing else went wrong. Every other method in §33.4.1 needs updates — windows needs a regular series, TIA needs the update in effect at the time, and collapsed as-built needs a defensible as-built with logic, which in practice comes from updates.

Q3. Curtis Boone's monthly schedule updates stop in month four. How many of the five delay-analysis methods are genuinely available to him?

A. All five, with reduced weight B. Three C. One, plus a weak as-planned versus as-built comparison D. None

Answer

C. Impacted as-planned, plus an as-planned versus as-built comparison that shows the job finished late without showing whose fault that was. The other four are not weakened — they are unavailable, and no amount of money or expert testimony creates the missing updates now. His consultant is not being difficult; she is describing a shelf with one item on it.

Q4. An owner delays a critical activity 12 days. During the same period the contractor's painting subcontractor runs 9 days behind on an activity that carried 20 calendar days of total float at the start of the period. The owner asserts concurrency and offers time with no money. The correct analysis is:

A. Concurrent — time only, no money B. Not concurrent — the painting activity consumed float and never drove completion C. Concurrent for 9 of the 12 days D. Cannot be determined without knowing the painting subcontractor's costs

Answer

B. The activity carried 20 days of float and consumed 9. It was never on the critical path, so it never independently delayed completion. Consuming float is not causing delay. Absent something else, the 12 days should be excusable and compensable. One caution: if the painting slip had continued past 20 days, the activity becomes critical from that point and the analysis changes for the remainder — concurrency is assessed period by period, not once for the whole job.

Q5. Late or absent notice defeats a claim at which gate?

A. Entitlement B. Causation C. Damages D. It does not defeat a claim; it reduces its value

Answer

A — entitlement. A conditional notice clause makes notice a condition precedent to the right to recover, so the facts never get a hearing no matter how strong the causation and damages proofs behind it are. That is exactly what happened to Curtis Boone's differing-site-conditions claim: the soils genuinely were unsuitable, $214,000 genuinely was spent, and it did not matter. Whether late notice waives the claim outright or merely obliges the other party to show it was prejudiced varies by jurisdiction and by clause language — and that single distinction is worth more than any argument you will ever make on the merits.

Q6. The strongest method of proving lost productivity is:

A. An industry inefficiency factor table applied to the impacted hours B. The total cost method C. A measured mile D. The modified total cost method

Answer

C — a measured mile, and it is not close. It compares your own performance on the same work on the same job, unimpacted period against impacted period. Because the baseline is your own actual performance rather than your bid, it removes the single most effective attack on every other method: your estimate was optimistic. Factor tables are negotiating references and sanity checks; presented as primary proof they get dismantled in about four minutes, and the dismantling damages the rest of your claim.

Q7. Your contract does not stipulate an extended general conditions daily rate. Which basis is weakest and most frequently rejected?

A. Actual audited field overhead for the delay period B. Total field overhead divided by the original contract duration C. Field overhead as a percentage of direct cost D. A stipulated rate negotiated after the delay

Answer

C. A percentage of direct cost has no connection to time, and a delay damage is entirely about time. It produces whatever number the chosen percentage produces. The descending order in §33.6.2 is: stipulated rate, audited actual for the period, total field overhead ÷ duration, then percentage. Fight for the stipulated rate at contract negotiation — it eliminates the argument before it exists.

Q8. In the Northgate windows analysis, Window 2 established 11 calendar days of compensable owner delay. At the contractually stipulated rate, the extended general conditions recovery is:

A. $46,350 B. $56,650 C. $58,300 D. $117,150

Answer

B — $56,650. `11 CD × $5,150/CD = $56,650`. Two other numbers worth carrying from that section: Kestrel's exposure on the 11 non-excusable days is `11 × $10,650/CD = $117,150` (extended general conditions plus liquidated damages), and the entire 11-day compensable finding rests on one fact — that medical-gas rough-in carried 9 days of total float on March 1 and therefore was not concurrent.

Q9. Curtis Boone's $118,600 unabsorbed home-office overhead claim was valued at zero because:

A. The arithmetic was wrong B. There was no suspension, Kestrel was never on standby, and Kestrel took on replacement work C. Home-office overhead is never recoverable D. He failed to give notice of it

Answer

B. Where formula-based home-office recovery is recognized at all, the predicates typically include an owner-caused suspension or delay of uncertain duration, the contractor held on standby, and an inability to take replacement work. Three predicates, three failures — the job worked continuously and Kestrel bid and won two other projects during the period. Note answer C is wrong as stated but points at something real: availability of this category varies substantially by jurisdiction, and many private contracts disclaim it by name. Ask counsel whether it exists for you before you spend money building the calculation.

Q10. In §33.10.2's worked decision framework — a claim prepared at $400,000, honest value $160,000, thirty months to resolve — which path nets the most?

A. Full formal claim through arbitration B. Formal claim to mediation only C. Executive negotiation with a well-organized position paper and no formal filing D. Absorbing it

Answer

C, at +$40,800. The full arbitration path — the one that feels like justice — loses $52,600 and takes two and a half years, because fixed pursuit costs and the time value of money eat a mid-sized claim alive. This is why experienced contractors settle: not softness, arithmetic. What changes the answer: a much larger claim, a fee-shifting provision, near-certain recovery, or an opponent who only pays at the courthouse steps.

True or False (5)

Answer, then give the one-line justification before you open the explanation.

Q11. A time extension for a delay that is excusable but non-compensable is worth nothing to the contractor.

Answer

False. It is worth the liquidated damages it releases — day for day. At Rivermont Elementary the 40-day extension moved the adjusted completion date past the actual completion date and eliminated a 13-day assessment: 13 CD × $2,500/CD = $32,500. On Northgate an excusable non-compensable day is worth $5,500. Time-only relief is real money, and §33.10.3 notes that a time-only resolution releasing liquidated damages is sometimes worth more than the cash you were chasing.

Q12. If your subcontractor's activity slips during the same period as an owner delay, you have a concurrency problem.

Answer

False. Only if the subcontractor's activity was on the critical path during that period. If it carried float and consumed it, it delayed nothing and is not concurrent with anything. That single test — the total-float column of the update in effect at the start of the period — disposes of a large share of alleged concurrency, and it is worth $56,650 in Window 2 on Northgate.

Q13. The owner's liquidated-damages assessment against you must clear the same three proofs your claim must clear.

Answer

True. Entitlement (a valid, enforceable clause and a contract date), causation (that you finished late against the adjusted date), and damages (usually satisfied by the clause itself, which is the point of liquidated damages). The three proofs are not a contractor's framework — they are the framework, and they apply identically to the owner assessing against you and to you backcharging a subcontractor. Enforceability rules vary by jurisdiction.

Q14. You cannot give contractual notice until you have quantified the cost and time impact.

Answer

False, and this is the most expensive misunderstanding in the whole area. The clock usually starts at the event or at the point a reasonable contractor would have recognized the condition — often weeks before you know what it costs. You give notice of the event, not of the number. "We do not yet know the cost or time impact and will supplement" is a complete and professional notice, and it takes about ten minutes.

Q15. Arbitration is faster, cheaper, and more private than litigation.

Answer

False as stated — the "cheaper" is the problem. Arbitration is generally faster and more private, and the decision-maker is usually more knowledgeable. But large construction arbitrations have come to look a great deal like litigation: extensive document exchange, multiple experts, long hearings, and arbitrator fees a court does not charge. It is not automatically cheaper, and appeal rights are extremely narrow — an award generally cannot be challenged because the arbitrator got the facts or the law wrong.

Short Answer (4)

Q16. Give the three mechanisms that make a contemporaneous schedule update more persuasive than a schedule reconstructed after the dispute.

Answer

Incentive: an update made in month six, before anyone knew there would be a dispute, was created with no motive to shade anything; one made in month twenty by a party who now needs a particular answer was created with one. Information: a contemporaneous update captures what the team actually believed the critical path was at that moment — logic since lost, resources since moved, constraints since forgotten. Reconstruction recovers outcome, not belief, and outcome is what is in dispute. Hindsight contamination: when you rebuild a schedule knowing how the job ended, you unconsciously build the logic that produces that ending. The contemporaneous update is the only version that could not have been shaped by knowing the answer.

Q17. Distinguish delay from disruption, and name the preferred proof for each.

Answer

Delay makes the project longer. Disruption makes the work less efficient — the same scope, the same people, a worse rate, because of interference, out-of-sequence work, trade stacking, crew-size changes, learning-curve loss from restarts, rework, dilution of supervision, or overtime fatigue. You can be disrupted without being delayed and delayed without being disrupted. Delay is proved through the critical path in contemporaneous schedule updates. Disruption is proved through a measured mile — your own unimpacted performance against your own impacted performance, from your own labor records.

Q18. Name the three questions that decide most concurrency arguments in practice.

Answer

(1) Was the second delay actually on the critical path during that period? A delay to an activity with float is not concurrent with anything. (2) Was it of a different character? Pacing — deliberately slowing because you are already delayed by the other party — is treated differently in many analyses, but it must be a conscious, documented, contemporaneous decision. Write it down when you do it, or it is not pacing, it is just being late. (3) Can the delays be separated in time or in effect? Window 3 on Northgate separated cleanly into 3 contractor-only days and 7 concurrent days, and that partition was possible only because both start and end dates were documented.

Q19. Why does one unsupported number damage a claim document out of all proportion to its size?

Answer

Because of how reviewers actually behave. When a reviewer finds one number they cannot trace, they stop believing the numbers they can trace and start hunting for more. It is not a moral judgment, it is a credibility cascade — and it is why an $18,000 line nobody could source can cost far more than $18,000. The corollary rules: never assert a fact you cannot exhibit; disclose an allocation method rather than just an allocation; and include the bad facts, because if you omit them the question stops being whether they mattered and becomes what else you left out.

Applied Scenarios (2)

Q20 — Two windows, a moving critical path, and the money.

Willow Street Community Center. Extended general conditions $1,600/CD, liquidated damages $1,200/CD, combined exposure $2,800/CD. Two monthly windows from your updates, with projected substantial completion stated in calendar days past the contract date:

• Window 1. Critical path: water main relocation → building pad → CMU first floor. The City's water utility takes 8 days beyond the accepted-schedule date to approve the relocation. Nothing else on the driving path moves.
• Window 2. The critical path shifts to structural steel → wood-framed second floor. Your steel erector pulls its crew for the first 12 days of the window. The City also closes street access to the site for 5 days, days 4 through 8 of the window, for a permitted community event. Both are on the critical path.

Build the apportionment, state the time extension, compute the money, and compute your own exposure. Then say which single number in Window 2 you would most want verified before you submit anything.

Answer

Apportionment.

Window	Slip	Compensable	Excusable, non-compensable	Non-excusable
1 — water main approval	8 CD	8	0	0
2 — steel crew pull + street closure	12 CD	0	5	7
Total	20 CD	8 CD	5 CD	7 CD

Window 2 partitions as days 1–3 contractor-only (3 CD), days 4–8 both live and both critical (5 CD, literal concurrency), days 9–12 contractor-only (4 CD). Contractor-only total 7 CD; concurrent 5 CD.

Time extension supported: 13 calendar days (8 compensable + 5 excusable). You are 20 days late in fact and 7 days late against the adjusted date.

Money: 8 CD × $1,600/CD = $12,800. The 5 concurrent days yield time but not money — you would have been delayed in that window anyway by your own erector.

Your exposure on the 7 days you own: 7 × $2,800/CD = $19,600 — $11,200 of unrecovered field overhead plus $8,400 of liquidated damages.

The number to verify: the total float on the structural steel activity at the month-4 data date. Everything in Window 2 turns on whether the steel chain was genuinely critical when the crew was pulled. If it carried float and the street closure hit a different critical chain, the 5 concurrent days become compensable and the answer moves by 5 × $1,600 = $8,000 — plus it changes which party owns the remaining 7. Notice the pattern: the number that decides the money is almost never a cost. It is a float value in a schedule update somebody had to run at the time.

Q21 — Audit a claim made against you.

Cardinal Mechanical submits a claim to Kestrel for $214,000 arising from out-of-sequence access in the imaging suite:

Identify the double-count, name three other audit findings, and state your opening internal valuation range.

Answer

The double-count. A total cost figure is actual cost − bid, and Cardinal's actual cost of $412,000 already contains its field overhead for the period. Claiming extended field overhead of $48,100 as a separate line charges Kestrel for the same dollars twice. This is the classic construction damages double-count and §33.8.1 tells you to look for it specifically in step 4.

Three more findings. 1. The $94,000 is a total cost claim and fails the predicates. Is a better method impossible? Cardinal has its own labor records and worked comparable duct elsewhere on this building — a measured mile is available, which defeats predicate 1 outright. Was the bid realistic? Were all actual costs reasonable? Was none of the overrun Cardinal's own? Nothing in the submission addresses any of it. 2. Idle equipment is claimed at the operating rate. Standby rates are lower than operating rates; claiming the operating rate is a credibility error before it is a dollar error. Ask for the daily reports showing the equipment idle and why, then reprice at standby. 3. Claim preparation cost is generally not recoverable absent a contract provision or statute that says otherwise — and this varies by jurisdiction. Also test the $1,850/CD field overhead rate against Cardinal's actual general-conditions detail, and test the 26 days against the schedule: how many were critical, and was Cardinal's own medical-gas rough-in slipping in the same window?

Opening valuation. The $58,400 of signed T&M tickets is real and clears all three gates — pay it or something close to it, and say so first. The productivity loss is probably genuine and is certainly unproven as submitted; offer to evaluate a measured mile from Cardinal's own records. An honest internal range lands somewhere around $75,000 to $115,000, with a walkaway written down before the first meeting.

And say the true part out loud. Tell Sofia Marchetti which element you think she is right about. It costs you nothing you were going to keep, and it converts a two-year argument into a three-week negotiation — which is §33.8.2's entire argument, and it is measured in dollars, not manners.

Scoring Guide

70 percent (15/21) is the threshold to proceed. But if you missed Q2, Q4, Q5, or Q12, go back regardless of your total. Those four are the difference between a claim that recovers and one that does not, and three of them turn on the same number: total float, in a schedule update somebody ran at the time.