Extension of Time Recovery — £35m Commercial Development

The situation

The project was experiencing significant programme pressure, with multiple delay events occurring concurrently across different areas of the works. The Contractor had not fully recognised or quantified its contractual entitlement to an Extension of Time, and the complexity and concurrency of the events made it difficult to establish the overall impact on the completion date. As a result, the project was operating under unnecessary programme pressure, with senior management lacking a clear understanding of the Contractor's true contractual position.

The contract

The project was procured under JCT Design & Build 2016, which sets out defined mechanisms for Relevant Events, delay notification and Extension of Time assessment. Establishing entitlement meant testing the reported position against what those mechanisms actually required and supported.

What needed examining

• Baseline and current programmes
• Critical path and key programme drivers
• Contemporaneous progress records
• Delay notices and project correspondence
• Sequence and interaction of concurrent delay events
• Cause and effect of individual delay events
• Impact of delay on the critical path
• Contractual entitlement to Extension of Time
• Previous assessments and reported completion positions

The analysis

The objective was to distinguish between individual delay events and their cumulative impact on completion. By analysing the interaction between multiple concurrent delays, we established the period of delay for which the Contractor had a genuine contractual entitlement.

The intervention

We undertook a detailed forensic review of the project records, going beyond the reported programme position to establish what had actually happened on the project and how the various delay events had affected the critical path. We reviewed contemporaneous programmes, progress records, correspondence, delay notifications and project documentation — reconstructing the chronology of events.

The outcome

The review established a clear, evidence-based Extension of Time entitlement, which was subsequently submitted to the Employer's Agent and certified. The additional time provided significant relief to the project programme, substantially reducing the completion pressure the project team had been working under.

ELLIS Insight

The Contractor moved from operating against an artificially compressed completion position to working against a realistic, contractually supported completion date. By combining detailed programme analysis, forensic review of contemporaneous records and contractual assessment, we identified an entitlement that had previously been overlooked — turning a complex concurrent delay position into a clear, certified Extension of Time and giving the project much-needed programme certainty.