Construction - Managing an Extension of Time Claim

Record the date the qualifying delay event occurred against the relevant job, identify the cause, and confirm it falls within a qualifying category under the contract terms.

Prepare and send written notice to the contract administrator within the required contractual period, stating the event, its likely programme impact, and that a formal claim will follow.

Gather site diary entries, programme updates, resource records, and correspondence that demonstrate the link between the delay event and the impact on the critical path of the programme.

Document the qualifying event, the cause-and-effect chain, the critical path activities affected, and the number of additional days claimed. Attach all supporting evidence.

Send the formal claim to the contract administrator with all supporting evidence. Record the submission date and the contractual deadline for a response against the job.

If no response is received within the contractual assessment period, issue a written chase and use @mentions to escalate internally. Do not allow the claim to go unacknowledged.

If the delay generated additional costs - prolonged preliminaries, extended plant hire, loss of productivity - quantify these and prepare a loss and expense claim to submit alongside or following the extension of time.

We did the extra work because the client asked us to, but we never issued a formal notice and now we cannot recover the time or cost.

We know the delay was not our fault, but our site records are patchy and the contract administrator is pushing back on the entitlement.

By the time we got round to preparing the claim, the client was already threatening liquidated damages for late completion.