A “total cost” claim for changed or additional work is frowned upon. This type of claim subtracts the contractor’s planned performance costs from the actual costs, points to several things the project owner did to increase costs, and then attributes the entire overrun to the owner. The problem is that the contractor has failed to establish specific increased cost elements that were caused by the project owner.
A “total time” delay claim suffers from the same weaknesses. Only critical path analysis can isolate delays to overall project completion and demonstrate that the project owner caused those delays, without concurrent delay by the contractor. But what if the construction contract did not require periodic, as-built schedule updates using critical path analysis? Can a contractor’s delay claim still be denied due to the failure to perform such an analysis?
The other case in this issue involves the definition of a “complete set of as-built drawings.” Is there a standard definition? What level of detail is required? Or is the requirement interpreted on a case-by-case basis depending on the intended use of the drawings?
