Effect of wind on Construction work.

In a place like Bahrain the wind speeds around the year are in the range of 15 to 20 Knots. The worst hit projects are the offshore projects. During the year 2002 to 2003 we lost 23 working days on our Mega port construction project. No account of this delay was considered in our initial Clause 14 programme.

In Al-Jubail SAFCO project, we have taken in consideration during planning stage the effect of wind on construction. This was agreed with the Engineer/Owner during the clarification meetings in early stage before proceeding with work. It’s the same when you are considering rainy weather conditions in certain areas. You can highlight in curtain the period of April-May and consider in your estimation that the productivity will be reduced by "x" % or consider that in this period we have "y" days to be lost. In our project, we majorated the overall duration of the activities in this period to take into account weather conditions.
It’s very essential that Contractor would know about the ground, site, weather, etc. conditions before getting the job as it’s difficult for him to claim money or time for conditions that he should have known and investigated about. Unless it is an inclement, exceptional, adverse weather conditions such as rarely happened before and unpredictable by weather forecast, the contractor can record these impacted days and attempt to claim extension of time.

Regards,
J. Daniel