Commercial – What should be in a construction delay report?
Here's what needs to be in your construction delay report
What is a construction delay report?
Construction delays are unplanned events which result in a cost or schedule variance from the original plan. And the only things guaranteed in life are death, taxes and construction project delays.
Construction plans weren't made to be broken, but they always are.
Construction projects are an incredibly complicated and interconnected assortment of designers and designs, contractors and subcontractors, trades and engineers and equipment and materials.
With so many moving parts, it's absolutely inevitable that the construction project strays or deviates away from the original plan.
What's important about construction delays is not so much if there is a construction delay (although they should try to be mitigated and removed as much as necessary) - but why there is a construction delay and who is responsible.
In order to understand why there is a construction delay and who is indeed responsible, we have the construction delay report. A construction delay report serves to be an objective and documented proof of a construction delay. The report framework is typically flexible enough to adapt to most site cases - and thorough enough to serve as proof of delay.
Why fill in a construction delay report anyway?
Without a construction delay report, delay responsibility and who pays for the effects of that delay is a matter of his or her word against mine. Construction delays impact other parties and whole million and billion dollar projects. You want to make sure that you prove you are either not responsible for the delay (and don't have to pay out), or that you document who was responsible (so that you can dispute any unfair claims).
So what needs to be in your construction delay report?
Maintaining standardised construction delay report formats and entries makes your records more reliable. So you should create a construction delay report framework which you can repeatedly use.
Some of the core elements of a delay report - and the layout and structure of the report are:
Engineer/foreman section
- Data of change event or delay
- Select the type of delay event
- Subcontractor delay
- Supplier delay
- Weather
- Description of the event (in writing)
- Photos of the event (pictures tell more than a thousand words when it comes to claims disputes so make sure to capture delays (where possible) with pictures and videos)
- Sketches of the issue (where applicable)
- Other parties involved
- Did the delay impact other parties - who and in what ways
- Digital signoff from engineer or foreman
Senior project engineer section
- Checklist questions
- Does this event need to be stored and claimed against a subcontractor or supplier
- Does this event need to be stored and claimed against the client?
- Additional senior project engineer comments
- Digital signoff from senior project engineer
Project manager section
- Checklist questions
- Does the information above warrant a claim to a subcontractor or supplier?
- Does the information above warrant a claim to the client?
- Digital signoff from project manager
An example construction delay report
See and use the delay analysis report template for free.
But managing construction delays is hard and time-consuming
We agree with you. Managing the day-to-day capturing of site information in a way which makes those records secure and easily traceable isn't easy.
At Sitemate, our product Dashpivot can certainly help with all of your commercial project needs. Dashpivot is a document assembly, automation and analytics platform which streamlines and automates data capture in the fold and form, photo and progress management back at the office.
You can try it for free to see if it helps your construction delay tracking and as a delay notice app - and other parts of your business as well.
Delay Analysis Report template
Detail those site delay events with this flexible template. See the template →
Extension of Time (EOT) Construction template
Manage contract extensions of time and get to approval faster. See the template →See how you can easily streamline your systems and processes with Sitemate today
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