Delay Analysis Forensic Planning Report Writing

It is not the same presenting the case to a technical person who understand schedule forensics than to a judge that is no expert in schedule forensics.

An extremely technical presentation to a judge might backfire. In the case of arbitration the contrary might hold.

Hi Stephen

Rafael has summed up the case very precisely - pitch yourtext to your audience.

If you are a contractor trying to bamboozle an employer by an overwhelming volume of data and technical gobble de gook then employ a delay analyst who charges by the volume of printed words.

Then you will receive archived texts and paragraphs copy - pasted from earlier submissions for similar cases - some of which may be relevant but do not need to be re-stated ad infinitum.

When a client asks me to review such a submission I can usually state a reasoned case for rejection in 2 or 3 pages - in one case 3 paragraphs.

If I am presenting a reasoned narrative to a tribunal who may not be technically qualified I assume they know nothing about the subject - a sort of Jack and Jill approach to claims - or Cat in the Hat for our US cousins.

They will not know - for instance - that the pre formed legs of an off shore drilling rig is called a "Jacket" - neither did I until I asked what? during an arbitration breifing last week.

In complex cases use animations - powerpoint is good to show what was planned v what happened - if the money is there use 3d cad.

In every case tell the story in a single "book" per event - stating:

Cause: What happened?

Effect:  What was the result!

Compare: How the effect compares with the As Bult data.

Then what: How did the Contractor deal with the problem?

In every case I embed snapshots of the programme stages or specific text extracts at each stage so the reader does not have to go scrabbling through multi appendicies to find the reference.

The skill of a delay analysts does not include the narrative phase - that follows instinctively - what is important is the ability to cut to the essence of the problem and focus on the real cause of the delay.

This only comes from a thourough analysis of the data and a knowledge of the construction process - plus talking to the charge hands if they are still there.

Best regards

Mike Testro

Hello Everyone,

This is a very interesting topic which relates to our current project which is 20% delay at the moment. In order to support the EOT request to the client, we need to demonstrate specific activity delays by the contractor as well as the client. From then the analysis for the shared delay will be evaluated. My first question is the first approach is to present the schedule delays using P6 with all the logs. Can you please advise how to do this in P6. It is not found in P6.

Thanks

Hi Henry

The delay events have to be added to the P6 programme as delay event bars - linked FS to the delayed task.

They have to be added in chronological order of date of event start.

When you have completed the task you will have to apply the concurrency rules to ascertain who owes what to who.

Best regards

Mike Testro

Thanks Mike,

Is there any option in P6 that could be use as an initial presentation to the extention of time. Important thing to note that a usefule report Writer in P3 - SR-12 which illustrates the comparison between baseline against plan including the logs in each activity is not found in P6. Any advise sa to this problem.

Thanks

Hi Henry

I know very little about P6 but the usual reports generated by programming software are not always user freindly.

I prefer to copy - past data from the columns in Asta PowerProject directly into Lotus spreadsheet where it can be tidied up and pasted into a word table as an integral part of the narrative.

I try to avoid lots of annexures where you have to scramble between files searching for relevant data.

Best regards

Mike Testro