Forensic Claims Consulting: Method, Evidence, and Analysis
What the discipline is
Forensic claims consulting applies structured, defensible analysis to construction and engineering disputes. The consultant's product is not advocacy but a reasoned opinion that survives cross-examination: a chronology, a causation chain, and a quantified impact, each traceable to contemporaneous records.
Concepts to master
- Contemporaneous records hierarchy: daily reports, diaries, meeting minutes, and correspondence generally outweigh later reconstructions. Understand why - proximity in time and reduced opportunity for bias.
- Delay analysis methods: as-planned vs. as-built, impacted as-planned, collapsed as-built, time impact analysis (window/snapshot), and as-built-but-for. Know each method's assumptions, data requirements, and appropriate use.
- Critical path and float: delay only matters to the extent it affects completion. Distinguish total float, free float, and float ownership (often contract-defined).
- Concurrency: independent, overlapping delays. Questions test whether a method properly isolates the compensable delay from concurrent employer or third-party delay.
- Causation vs. entitlement vs. quantum: three separate tests. A consultant may prove causation yet find no entitlement under the contract, or entitlement with reduced quantum.
- Cost heads: extended preliminaries/time-related overhead, escalation, idle labor and equipment, disruption, productivity loss, financing charges, and acceleration/mitigation costs.
Traps in questions
Beware options that confuse disruption (lost productivity) with delay; that assume the longest delay is automatically critical; that treat the as-built schedule as a baseline; or that ignore notice and record-quality prerequisites. Watch for 'always/never' absolutes.
Rule of thumb
The 'but-for' test: ask, 'If the employer's event had not occurred, would the contractor's completion still have been delayed?' If yes, that period is not compensable. Apply this to every delay window before quantifying.
Worked example: A 40-day owner-caused delay overlaps a 25-day subcontractor default on a parallel critical path. The but-for test yields 15 days of compensable critical delay (40 − 25 concurrent), not 40.