"The project ran four months late and it wasn't our fault" is a claim, not evidence. Turning that sentence into something a court, an insurer or an owner can actually evaluate requires Critical Path Method (CPM) scheduling, specifically, a forensic schedule analysis built on real project data rather than a narrative assembled after the fact.
CPM scheduling maps every task on a project, how long each takes and which tasks depend on which others, to identify the critical path: the sequence of dependent tasks that determines the project's actual completion date. Delay a task on the critical path and the whole project slips. A task with float, slack time before it affects anything downstream, can absorb the same delay without moving the completion date at all. That distinction is the entire basis for evaluating whether a specific delay actually caused the project to run late, or just felt like it did.
- 1. As-planned vs. as-built comparison. The baseline schedule against what actually happened, the starting point for identifying where and when the project diverged from plan.
- 2. Time impact analysis. Modeling a specific delay event into the schedule at the point it occurred, to isolate its actual effect on the completion date from everything else happening on the project at the same time.
- 3. Concurrent delay analysis. Identifying whether more than one party's delay was happening on the critical path at the same time, which affects who bears responsibility and, often, who can recover delay damages for the overlapping period.
- 4. Excusable vs. compensable classification. Not every delay that excuses a contractor from liquidated damages also entitles them to additional compensation. The schedule analysis is what supports, or undercuts, each classification with actual data rather than assertion.
AACE International's Recommended Practice 29R-03, Forensic Schedule Analysis, is the industry-recognized framework behind these methods, widely used and cited in construction delay litigation and arbitration to structure exactly this kind of analysis.
For attorneys and carriers evaluating a delay claim, the schedule data either supports the narrative or it doesn't. A real forensic schedule analysis is what tells you which before the claim gets expensive to litigate. For developers and owners, the same CPM discipline used defensively in a dispute is what should be running proactively on every active project: delay caught and documented in real time is far cheaper to resolve than delay reconstructed after the fact.
This article is a general informational overview, not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client or expert-client relationship.
