Delay and disruption records to keep while it is happening
Handover of the south wing was set for Monday. On Wednesday the tenant is still moving out, and your framing crew of eight is split between two half-finished areas of the annex, working around the electricians. Nothing has stopped, so nobody has written anything down.
Delay is easy to see: work stops. Disruption is not: the crew keeps working, but slower — out of sequence, in smaller areas, stacked with other trades. Both are hard to prove without records made at the time. The Society of Construction Law's Delay and Disruption Protocol, a UK guidance document rather than law, says such records must be made as the work progresses, not afterwards, and that progress, resource and cost records should state facts, not opinions.
Wisconsin's Department of Transportation tells its own engineers the same: if in doubt whether a delay matters, record it, because an extra entry is easier to disregard than facts are to recover from memory. For weather, see recording weather days; this lesson covers events caused by others.
What to record each day
- The event: what happened, when it started and ended, the cause as far as you know, and how you found out.
- The work affected: activities by location, what was resequenced, and what the crew did instead.
- Crews and equipment: head count and hours on affected work, idle time and waiting equipment, with times.
- Output: quantities installed in the affected area and in an unaffected one. Metres framed, not "slow day".
- Evidence: dated photos of the obstruction and the workaround; save the emails and texts about it.
- Notices: what you sent, to whom and when, and any reply; see notice of change.
- Your own causes: rework, absences or late material on your side, kept separate so the rest of the record is credible.
Common mistakes
- Recording only full stoppages and ignoring slow, disrupted days.
- Writing opinions ("owner's fault again") instead of facts.
- Leaving out quantities, so lost output cannot be measured.
- Stopping the entries when the crew is moved, before the event is over.
Checklist
Each day of a delay or disruption
- Event, start time and how you learned of it
- Activities and locations affected
- Crews, hours and idle equipment, with times
- Quantities installed, affected and unaffected
- Dated photos and saved messages
- Notices sent and replies received
- Causes on your side, recorded separately
Check your understanding
Your crew worked all day but installed half the planned quantity because another trade was in the area. What must the record show?
