Managing Delay and Impact Claims in Construction

Maged Abdelsayed, Partner, HKA Global

You will get the latest practical and technical knowledge, insights and expert tips to better manage or defend common types of delay claims, with distinctions for owners, contractors and subcontractors.

• What’s new and what’s happening for 2025
• How and why managing delays and claims has become more ‘defensive’ and intricate in the face of ongoing market uncertainty and global impacting events
• What you need to know now about an owner’s relative position, including why owners typically defend these claims, not initiate them
• Proactive risk management insights and best practices for contractors and subcontractors to prepare their cases/claims, including how they are similar and how they are distinct and how to avoid common missteps
  • Technical aspects
  • What owners need to prove – the expectations for 2025
  • What contractors and subcontractors need to prove despite a climate of ongoing market uncertainty
• Telling your delay and impact story’ – proven approaches for recording essential details, identifying and overcoming weaknesses in methodology, organizing documents, and communicating effectively, both internally and with the other side

Ali Al-Ahmad, Senior Managing Director, Head of Canada Construction, Projects & Assets, FTI Consulting
Melissa DiMarco, Partner, Accuracy
Niamh Ní Chróinín, Senior Director, Construction, Disputes & Advisory, Ankura

• Overview of key issues and challenges for 2025
• Managing conflicts of interest
• How can the expert best add value to the client?
• Considerations in choosing the methodology for calculating the claim
• Managing the lawyer who retains you
• Managing the court/arbitration panel
• Ethical issues
• Loss of productivity
• Disruption claims
• Concurrent delay

Stefan Gruszka, Assistant General Counsel, Kiewit Canada Inc.
Seema Lal, Singleton Reynolds LLP
Janet Oh, Chief Legal Officer, WSP
Marcia Oliver, General Counsel, VP Legal & Indigenous Relations, Bennett Group
Rob Pattison, Senior Vice President, Infrastructure Ontario

This panel of multidisciplinary practitioners will share their insights, tips and best practices on how to ensure proper planning and to overcome key challenges involving an unrealistic schedule, including:

• “You want it when?” Setting the schedule – how a schedule is ideally determined
• “Getting real” with the unrealistic schedule – lessons learned and troubleshooting tip
• Ensuring proper planning despite an owner’s rush to build or mitigating any fall-out after the project was started with “rose-coloured glasses”
• Notice:
  • Why do we need it? What’s the expectation for 2025?
  • Why are owners and the courts getting so sticky about late notice or no notice at all?
  • How to give notice in a manner which complies with the contract but doesn’t impair the relationship – how to avoid common pitfalls
• What to do about upstream/downstream claims (i.e. double-dipping)
• “The contractor is delaying me. What do I do?”
• How to manage finger-pointing and get the job done

Associate Justice Todd Robinson, Ontario Superior Court of Justice
Jason Annibale, Partner, McMillan LLP
Edward (Ted) Dreyer, Partner, Bennett Grant LLP, and Certified Adjudicator, Ontario Dispute Adjudication for Construction Contracts
Chris O’Connor KC, Principal, O’Connor Alternative Dispute Resolution
Meera Wagman, Managing Director, Secretariat International

You will hear from a panel of decision-makers who preside over delay and impact claims, including a Judge, Mediator, Arbitrator and Adjudicator. This exceptional panel will discuss practical elements, their top tips to enhance your efforts in each type of proceeding, including:

• The evidence the adjudicator looks for (hint: it’s not the expert!)
• Industry studies about productivity loss – do they have any use at all?
• Strategies for effectively using facts, body language and technology
• How the expert can help – and hurt – the process
• How do get an expert report admitted or tossed
• “The best expert I ever saw…”
• Do’s and don’ts and pet peeves to stay on the “good side” of the decision-maker

(Workshop will include two 15 minutes breaks at ~11:15 a.m. and 12:45 p.m.)

Niamh Ní Chróinín, Senior Director, Construction, Disputes & Advisory, Ankura
Michael Creedon, Senior Claims Manager, Contracts & Procurement, LNG Canada

Put into practice what you learned in the program, or in your own practice, and take advantage of the rare opportunity to get facilitated experience and personalized support in working through some key and emerging challenges arising in a delay claim fact scenario for 2025. Activities and practical discussion may include:

• Overview of how to complete your own analysis and draft your own claim, using a unique fact scenario
• Review of key definitions and mechanisms, and insights for developing a proactive mindset when approaching a delay claim
• Strategies for developing/maintaining effective documentation and dealing with common pitfalls
• Walk-through of a schedule with overlapping red lines, understanding what this means and the impacts to the critical path
• Techniques for developing simple graphs and why they are so persuasive (even if no formal schedule analysis)
• Comprehending the key challenges/sticking points of schedule analysis and tips for overcoming them, including for cross-checking site diaries
• Grasping the various costs associated with schedule
• Problem-solving strategies for bridging gaps where limited or poor information is available

Included with your registration (program or workshop), these on demand modules cover foundational concepts and they are suited to those who are newer to the area or those who may benefit from a succinct refresher. We recommend viewing all three online modules before attending the program or workshop.

Module One – The Legal Context and Key Principles Surrounding Delay Claims (52 mins, on demand, recorded in 2021)
Jason Annibale
Andrea Lee

Get a practical overview of the legal context and key principles that you need to know when dealing with delay claims to enhance your working knowledge.

Module Two – Working with Experts in Delay Claims: What You Need to Know (48 mins, on demand, recorded in 2021)
Glenn Ackerley

Gain a practical understanding of how to work effectively with experts in delay claims, including the state of the law and the industry, common pitfalls to watch out for.

Module Three – Overview of the Different Methods for Calculating Delay and Impact Losses (62 mins, recorded in 2024)
Meera Wagman

Get a practical understanding of the six most common delay analysis methods: time impact, collapsed as-built, time slice windows, as-planned versus as-built windows, longest path, impacted as planned.