Steel Delay and the Re-Baselined Schedule
You are the owner's construction manager on a 14-month, $38M cold-storage warehouse. The approved baseline CPM schedule shows structural steel erection complete in month 7, with 10 days of total float before the roof-enclosure milestone. At the month-3 update, connection-detail submittals have taken 6 days longer than the contract review period, and the fabricator reports a mill-roll shortage pushing delivery out 21 days. The general contractor's update still shows on-time completion: they changed the steel activity's duration from 6 weeks to 9 weeks and re-labelled the file "Baseline Rev 2." The owner's lender requires monthly variance reporting against the approved baseline, and the GC calls the change "just a schedule update."
1. What is wrong with the GC's approach, and what must you require before accepting the next monthly update?
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The GC has conflated a schedule update with a baseline revision. An update reflects actual dates, remaining durations, and revised logic against the approved baseline; a baseline revision is a contract change requiring formal change control and owner approval. Retitling the file does not authorize it.
Keeping the approved baseline lets you compute what the GC's version hides: 6 days of extended submittal review plus 21 days of mill-roll delay = 27 days against 10 days of float, so the roof-enclosure milestone absorbs a 17-day slip and becomes critical to the finish date.
Before accepting the update, require:
- the approved baseline retained unchanged for variance and lender reporting;
- the update submitted as a separate file with retained logic and actual start/finish dates;
- a time impact analysis (fragnet) for each delay event, cause-coded (design review vs. supplier);
- written justification for any duration change to an unstarted activity, since lengthening a future activity to mask a late start is manipulation, not updating.
2. Who bears the 27 days, and who owns the 10 days of float?
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Treat the two events separately because their entitlement differs.
Submittal review (6 days): measure the actual review turn against the review period stated in the contract. If the reviewer exceeded its own window, that portion is owner-caused and excusable, often compensable.
Mill roll (21 days): supplier and market risk generally sits with the contractor unless the contract names it as an owner-furnished or owner-specified source, or a force majeure-type clause reaches it. Assume GC risk until the contract says otherwise.
Float: where the contract is silent, the defensible position is that float is a shared project resource - consuming it is not delay until it is exhausted. Six owner-caused days consume six, leaving four. The supplier event then consumes the remaining four and produces 17 days of project delay attributable to the GC's risk. If the contract expressly assigns float to the owner (or states "first to use"), the allocation flips to a concurrency analysis.
State that you need the contract language and the cause-coded TIA before conceding a single day of time.
3. The GC proposes a second erection crew at $46,000/week for four weeks. How do you evaluate it and what do you approve?
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First test whether the money buys time on the controlling path. Ask for a recovery schedule showing days recovered to roof enclosure, not weeks of crew on site - a second crew is often constrained by crane availability, laydown space, connection detail, and inspection capacity, and may produce no net gain.
Second, price the comparison. Four weeks at $46,000 = $184,000. Set that against the cost of 17 days of delay: extended general conditions, winter protection, lost rent or liquidated damages, and the lender's carry cost.
Third, decide who pays. If the acceleration recovers owner-caused review days, pursuing it creates a constructive-acceleration exposure on the owner. If it recovers the GC's own supplier delay, the cost belongs to the GC's contingency, not to the owner.
Approve a not-to-exceed amount with payment tied to verified milestones (e.g., first bolt at week 1, 50% erected at week 2), require the recovery schedule as a condition, and reserve all rights on time and cost in writing.