Weather Delays 229

EVALUATING RESPONSIBILITY
When evaluating the responsibility for a delay, it is necessary to review the
Contract and other available Project documents just noted. These documents
will enable the analyst to make a determination of the cause for the delay
and who was responsible for that cause. As stated earlier, the delay analysis
accounts for minor errors in the schedule. Essentially, this means that even
if the delay analysis indicates that an activity in the schedule is delayed by a
certain number of days, it may be the result of an issue not identified or logi-
cally related in the schedule. For example, the delay analysis may determine
that the Foundations at Building A started ten days late. A review of all the
available Project documents indicated that the equipment needed to excavate
the footings was unable to mobilize to that portion of the scheduled work due
to the ongoing work of the Excavation and Placement of 48" RCP at Main
Entrance. Further review of the Project documents indicated that the Owner
issued a change order for an additional 500 feet of 48-inch reinforced concrete
pipe along the main entrance roadway. Even though these two activities were
not linked logically in the schedule and were initially unrelated in the field, a
review of the Project documents indicated that the Contractor could not start
the Foundations at Building A until the installation of the 48-inch RCP was
complete, which would then provide access for the equipment needed to install
the Building A foundations.

WEATHER DELAYS
It is common for time to be “of the essence” in a construction Contract. It is also
common for “Contract time” or the Contract completion date to be terms defined
by the Contract. In addition, given the Contract’s role in defining the sharing of
risk, especially the considerable risk associated with weather, it is common for
the Contract to specifically address how weather-related time extensions will be
determined and administered.
It is important to know if, how, and in what form the Contract grants addi-
tional time for weather. The Contract language for granting extra time for
weather delays can vary from allowing recovery of one workday for every work-
day lost to allowing no time at all. Typically weather-related time extension pro-
visions only grant extra Contract time for unusually severe weather. When that
is the case, the Contractor is required to consider and account for anticipated
weather in its bid and work durations.
The ability to identify the number of days that the actual precipitation
exceeded the monthly average or the number of days that the temperature fell
below the norm is only the beginning. The Contractor must first demonstrate
that the adverse weather experienced at the Project site limited its ability to per-
form work on those weather-affected days.
The second element the Contractor must demonstrate is that the unusually
severe weather delayed the Project. This requires the Contractor to establish that
the weather-affected work was on the Project’s critical path, because only delays