Float: ownership, use and proof

The types that matter commercially

• Total float: how long an activity can slip before completion is affected.
• Free float: how long it can slip before the next activity is affected.
• Terminal float: the gap between a contractor’s planned completion and the contractual date.

Who owns it

Technical guidance The mainstream guidance position is that, absent express words, float is not owned exclusively by either party and is available to the project, with entitlement biting once employer delay pushes completion beyond the contractual date. Guidance is not law, and this is a favourite target of amendment.

Amendments run in both directions. Some allocate float to the employer, so that the contractor absorbs delay while any float remains. Some require the contractor to maintain terminal float, or prohibit it entirely. Some define float in a way that differs from the way the scheduling software calculates it, which is a trap worth checking early.

Proving what the float was

Because float is model-dependent, a float argument is really an argument about which model to believe. That means the baseline and each update have to be validated before the float question can be answered, and it means an unexplained logic change between updates can move float without anybody noticing.

Pacing

A contractor that slows work because another path is already delayed is pacing, not defaulting. The distinction is invisible in a bare programme and obvious in the contemporaneous record: a decision explained at the time is pacing, and the same decision explained three years later is an argument.