Chapter Seven: Contract Scheduling Requirements - Construction Schedules - Fifth Edition
Michael T. Callahan is President of CCL Construction Consultants, Inc. He maintains an active international consulting practice in the measurement and responsibility of delay, along with the quantification of additional performance costs and other construction and design-related matters. He earned a B.A. from the University of Kansas and both a J.D. and L.L.M. from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Mr. Callahan has written or edited Termination of Construction and Design Contracts; Procurement of Design and Construction Contracts; Construction Change Order Claims—2nd Edition; and, is the co-author of Construction Delays Claim. He also prepares a monthly newsletter summarizing current design and construction case decisions for Construction Law Digest. Mr. Callahan was an adjunct professor at the University of Kansas and has lectured throughout the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Far East on design and construction-related topics. He is a member of the Kansas, New Jersey, and Missouri bars by examination. Mr. Callahan is also a frequent arbitrator, negotiator, mediator, and a regional advisor to the American Arbitration Association.
H. Murray Hohns, PE, Fellow ASCE, was a Construction Consultant, Mediator and Arbitrator in private practice. He began to work out of Honolulu in 1987 and his specialty was construction delay, those responsible, and its consequences. Mr. Hohns founded Wagner-Hohns-Inglis-Inc. in 1965 and built it into one of the country’s 250 largest Consulting Engineers. He had two degrees in Civil Engineering and an MA in theology. He wrote or contributed to eight books on dispute resolution, worked on projects in all 50 states and overseas, and managed major construction projects for their owners. Mr. Hohns also wrote a monthly expert commentary for a compilation of reported construction cases for over seven years. He was former President of the Project Management Institute, the National Academy of Forensic Engineers, a member of the Board of Directors for the American Arbitration Association and a thirteen-year member of the national investment committee for a major religious denomination.
Originally from Construction Schedules: Analysis, Evaluation and Interpretation of Schedules in Litigation and Dispute Resolution - Fifth Edition
§ 7-1 General Contract Scheduling Requirements
We conclude this fifth edition with a thorough discussion of schedule specifications from the points of view of contractors, designers and owners by commenting about some of the standard form contract conditions and specifications now in use. We include a review of the FIDIC general conditions which is the standard for working in Europe, the Middle-East and beyond.
Our discussion includes lessons learned from the disputes confronted by the courts that form the previous chapters “The Law and Construction Schedules” and the attributes of good schedule specifications described in “Improving Scheduling Clauses and Requirements.” Our discussion comments on the bias or the lack of bias in these standard forms.
All contractors claim they give serious attention to the development of their progress schedules and their updated versions though that amount varies widely from project manager to project manager. Design professionals like to display their knowledge of network scheduling though we never see a designer issue a schedule for its work. Most owners believe that construction schedules are necessary, very valuable, and owners will therefore often require their contractors to utilize detailed expensive forms of modern network planning. Most owners do not require their designers to schedule their work.
The design professional, and once in a while the construction manager, sets the particular standards for the scheduling techniques that are to be used on the project; the designers are the authors of the special contract conditions which contain or alter the specifications for the schedule technique found in the standard form used by the owner that retained the designer. Lastly, the neutral or Judge that may have to decide what happened and why on this project will review the schedule, its contract requirements and their idea of what the schedule should have done or included will be the final voice on the project.
Wise participants in the construction industry must understand how each participant believes is the way that things should be to be fair. Your authors have worked for Owners and Contractor organizations where the intent of our hire was to help write standard contract conditions which offered the best control of the unknown to the Party that hired us. Our value was enhanced because we understood the bias or preferences of each party. We start with a standard form that is written with Contractor bias.
"The new edition of Construction Schedules is a welcome update to the Construction Industry. Construction Schedules is a practical and useful guide to the practitioner in addressing construction delay claims. This treatise will provide a much needed discussion of alternative scheduling methods. In light of recent case law that seems to open the door to alternative schedule analysis, Callahan's and Hohns' most recent effort should be a welcome library addition to Owners, Contractors, Designers and their counsel."
--H. James Wulfsberg, Senior Principal with Wulfsberg Reese Colvig & Firstman, and nationally recognized expert in construction law