Delay caused by a combination of two reasons

Uri,

Try to analyse the delay caused by each reason/event independantly. That’s an easy statement for me to make, but let me expand.

As you say the contract terms deal with ground conditions and inclement weather situations differently; as do most contracts.

For the ’ground conditions’ event, identify the date when this stated to physically affect the contractor’s works on site and the date when the affect ended, i.e, when the affected groundworks were completed. The period between the two dates is the delay period. Carry out a progress update as of the day before the first date; this establishes the delay to project completion (if any) prior to the event happening. Then carry out a progress update as of the day after the second date; this establishes the maximum delay caused to project completion by the event.

Carry out a similar set of analyses for the ’inclement weather’ event.

Assuming the two events are concurrent, it is only from review and investigation of project records that you can identify which event caused the delay on a particular calendar day. For example, if it rained all day on, say, day 30; then the delay on this day is caused by the ’inclemant weather’ not ’ground conditions’. This part of the analysis is to some extent subjective.

Roger Gibson

Judge the merits of both ground conditions and inclement weather situation seperately because as per your stated position these delays cannot be claimed in merged form although the Contract Conditions do not support too much .So evalute these delays seperately.

Roger / shahzad,

Thanks for your feedback. I guess I was not clear enough - this is only ONE DELAY (the site got flooded) caused by a combination of two reasons.

It is a little bit more complicated, or am I missing something here?

Uri,

It seems you are trying to determin the main cause of an event [the flood] which is being blamed on two causes.
A logic problem that you could view on a ’But For’ basis.
But for either of the causes [A- ground Conditions, B- Inclemant weather] would the Event have occoured.
key questions are :-
1. Would the site have flooded if the bad ground did not exist and the inclement weather occoured.
2. Would the site have flooded if the bad ground did exist but the inclement weather did not occour.

Given that the answer to 2 is most likely NO, the root cause of the flood is in fact the weather.

The bad ground may have exacerbated the effect of the weather and if the answer to 1 is no, it may imply the bad ground caused the flood, but it didn’t it was the 2nd contributing factor not the 1st contributing factor.

Not being there its difficult to imagine your situation , but you may have a situation wherby if the bad ground had been good then the bad weather MAY not have caused a flood. But this is just conjecture unless there was a previous bout of equally bad weather when the ground was good and the site did not flood.

The only certainty and fundamental truth [indeed fact] is that without the bad weather the flood would not have occoured. The view that the bad ground ’caused’ the flood is probably at best conjecture not fact.
Regards
JK

Jonathan,

Thank you for your educating answer.