Advance Payment

At home advanced payments to contractor are very rare, usually contractor installs, then bill and get paid 30 days after billing.

It is not unusual that some equipment manufacturer require an advance letter of credit deposited on a bank before start manufacturing and the transfer of money is performed at shipping. The purchase contract is subject to delivery of money. 

So it depends on your contract terms.

http://www.ncconstructionnews.com/uncategorized/can-you-stop-work-for-nonpayment/?doing_wp_cron=1389381901.0831100940704345703125 

http://www.sauerconstructionlaw.com/Articles/Article20.html

I would be reluctant to accept such baseline, unfortunately baselines and baseline updates can be interpreted as a change in contract terms. I would argue the delay will happen only if there is breach of contract but mere non payment for some time does not represents breach of contract. To make assumptions can be very risky. 

As Rafael says, it very much depends on contract & circumstances.

I have worked on projects before where a subby could not fund the procurement of materials without an advance payment, hence this might reasonably be ppart of the critical path, so long as the contract ackowledged it.

I have also worked with subcontractors who just outright refuse to do start any work without an advance payment (these tend to be subbies in a monopoly position, such as utility companies)

Never had it with a principal contractor before, but if the contract states a payment will be made before any work commences, then I don't see why it should be treated any differently to any other client deliberable which may fall on the critical path (approval of design, provision of power, etc).

If the contract is such that the contractor is not obliged to commence a critcal element of work until this payment is made, they are quite within their rights to include it in the critical path.

Cheers,

G

Thanks Gary and Rafael for your replies .