First, please be acutely aware of what this is, and is not. It is not authoritative legal advice. Only skilled construction attorneys are equipped to furnish such. However, construction, per se, and construction legal issues, are inexorably intertwined, increasingly more so as time passes. To prevail in an expensive owner-caused performance delay, for example, absolutely nothing replaces contractor early awareness of its legal entitlement. That turns on the facts at issue and how they apply to the specific theory of damages, which, in turn, permits entitlement to recover the damages.

Contracting is complicated and thus dispute-prone. You as a contractor have a better early-on grasp of the facts than any attorney or construction consultant possibly could at that stage of the problem. Therefore, some rudimentary understanding of the legal side of your entitlement to damages - resulting from the facts at the root of the problem - will empower you, the contractor, toward making early, timely, notification to your facility owner, and taking other important initial action.

Perhaps the most commonly occurring set of disruption and delay issues at construction sites comes under the heading of "differing site conditions", (DSC). Things found by the contractor after contract signing that are different than represented by the contract documents are a "Type I Differing Site Condition". Instead, the condition may fall under the heading of a "Type II Differing Site Condition"; conditions unusual in nature that differ in a materially physical way from those normally encountered in similar contracts.

All federal construction contracts contain some form of a so-called equitable adjustment clause. This clause is designed to do financial equity for contractors should they meet (for example) a DSC during contract performance. Realizing that contractors who, under the contract would otherwise be held responsible for all costs of completing the contract, even those of which no one has knowledge at bid time, would compel inclusion by bidders of large contingency figures in the bids driving up bid costs needlessly where no problems ultimately exist, the government began employing the clause in 1927. Read more...