Delay and quantum glossary

Acceleration

Working faster or with more resource to recover or beat a date. Directed acceleration is instructed. Agreed acceleration is bargained. Constructive acceleration is claimed where an extension that was due was refused and the contractor accelerated to avoid damages. Not the same as mitigation, and not automatically recoverable.

As-built programme

A record of what actually happened, with actual dates. It contains no logic of its own, which is why every relationship in a collapsed as-built was placed there by an analyst and is therefore contestable.

Concurrent delay

Two independent causes, one an employer risk and one a contractor risk, each effective in delaying the same completion obligation over an overlapping period. Not two problems in the same month. Not two delays on different paths.

Critical path

The sequence of work controlling completion. The calculated path is an output of a model; the controlling path is a finding about the project. Delay analysis lives in the gap.

Disruption

Loss of efficiency: the same work consuming more resource because conditions changed. Can occur without any delay to completion. Not proved by an overrun.

Float

The time an activity can slip before affecting the completion date (total float) or the next activity (free float). A property of the model, not a bank balance, and its ownership is a contract question.

Global claim

A claim that attributes a total loss to a group of events without linking each cause to each effect. Treated with suspicion by tribunals and by the mainstream guidance. Not automatically fatal, and not a substitute for cause-by-cause proof where that proof was available.

Liquidated damages

A pre-agreed rate for late completion. Not an automatic debt: the clause has prerequisites, and enforceability varies by jurisdiction.

Loss and expense

A specific JCT contract mechanism triggered by Relevant Matters. Not a general name for money on a construction project, and not the same list as the Relevant Events that earn time.

Measured mile

A productivity comparison between an impacted period and a genuinely comparable unimpacted period on the same project. Not a comparison against the best week on the job.

Pacing

Deliberately slowing work because another path is already delayed. Legitimate in principle, indistinguishable from default in a bare programme, and provable only from the contemporaneous record.

Prolongation

Time-related cost of a compensable period, proved from actual cost records. Not a day rate multiplied by the days in an extension.

Quantum

The money question: what is recoverable, on what basis, proved how. Sits downstream of entitlement and causation.

Time at large

The state in which no fixed completion date applies and the obligation becomes to complete within a reasonable time. Usually prevented by effective extension machinery. Rarely as available as it is argued to be.