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Scheduling Experts Have A Variety Of Methods Available

9/28/2017 | Construction Blog

Scheduling experts have a variety of methods available to them for analyzing delays, but all methods are not equally reliable or persuasive, a point well illustrated by the April, 2017 decision of the United States Court of Federal Claims in K-Con Building Systems, Inc. v. United States, 131 Fed.Cl. 275 (2017).  That decision provides a detailed analysis of the competing opinions of the parties’ scheduling experts, and the court found that the scheduling analysis method employed by the defendant was more persuasive.  The court stated: “The parties present diametrically opposed descriptions of the critical path of performance—plaintiff submits that the critical path of performance should be based on an as-planned, forward-looking schedule, and defendant contends that the critical path of performance should be based on an as-built, backward-looking schedule. The court agrees with defendant that the proper way to determine what activities were on the critical path of performance in this case is to examine what actually occurred during contract performance. There are two reasons for this conclusion. First, a critical path schedule that relies solely on the schedule set forth in the contract specifications does not account for any subsequent changes to the schedule authorized by the contracting agency…. Second, the use of a contractually based critical path schedule does not reflect that plaintiff did not actually perform in accordance with the schedule set forth in the contract specifications.”