Time-related cost is assessed by reference to the period in which the delaying event occurred, not the period at the end of the job. That single principle disposes of a large share of these claims.
The period, and the nature of the cost.
The SCL Protocol is explicit that compensation for prolongation is assessed by reference to the period when the effect of the employer risk event was felt, not by taking the rate of expenditure in the extended period at the end of the project.
The distinction matters because site establishment at the end of a job is usually lighter than during the peak. Claiming the extended period inflates the claim and is straightforward to attack.
The cost has to be genuinely time-related: site staff, accommodation, welfare, standing plant, utilities, insurances running with time. Cost caused by the event rather than by its duration belongs in a different head.
Head office overhead is a separate argument again, and formula recovery is a fallback rather than a starting point.
How prolongation is built.
From resourced records, not from a rate multiplied by a number of weeks.
Fix the delay periods
Establish when each compensable event actually affected progress.
Identify time-related cost
Separate cost that runs with time from cost caused by the event itself.
Resource the period
Establish actual site establishment during the delay period from the records.
Exclude non-compensable periods
Remove periods of contractor delay and, on the usual approach, concurrent periods.
Address head office overhead
Prove actual under-recovery where possible before reaching for a formula.
What the argument is built from.
Prolongation is an accounting exercise anchored to a schedule finding.
Where these claims fail.
The most common error is structural rather than evidential.
The extended period is used
Costing the weeks at the end of the job rather than the period of the delay overstates the claim and is easy to defeat.
Cost is not time-related
Event-caused cost claimed as prolongation duplicates other heads.
The formula is the starting point
Hudson, Emden, or Eichleay applied without first attempting actual cost invites a challenge to the whole head.
Concurrent periods are included
Where the extension arises in a concurrent period, prolongation cost generally does not follow it.
What the Matter Model does with it.
It builds the time-related cost case from resourced site records rather than from a formula, and ties each claimed cost to the delay period said to have caused it.
Every claimed day is traceable to the schedule finding that supports it, so a change in the delay analysis moves the damages with it.
Standards and authorities
- SCL Delay and Disruption Protocol, 2nd edition (February 2017), Core Principles on prolongation
- Eichleay Corporation, ASBCA No. 5183 (1960), on head office overhead
General reference on how these disputes are argued. Not legal advice, and not a statement of the law of every jurisdiction or seat.
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