INTRODUCTION
If one hundred construction experts were to review this case file, at least ninety-nine of those would conclude the Contractor had never previously built such a $10M project. The Construction Contractor-Caused Problems in this case were comparable to that of the most substandard work Holloway has investigated over the past 45 years.
Steve Holloway served as the Owner’s liability and damages expert. Steve testified in arbitration that he could not find any area of the Contractor’s performance that met the Contract’s requirements or industry standards. Root causes of delay included (a) excessive turnover of the Contractor’s job site superintendents, (b) incompetent project management and administration, combined with (c) senior contractor management (Director of Construction, VP of Operations, Senior Project Manager, etc.) failures to provide effective (if any) job oversight.
CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTOR-CAUSED PROBLEMS
To both the Owner’s and its own detriment, the Contractor failed to properly prepare or prepare at all critical documents required by the Contract and industry practices such as project controls or earned value reports, daily field reports, Owner Architect Contractor (OAC) meeting minutes, subcontractor meeting minutes, applications for payment, monthly progress reports, project schedules, Change Orders (CO), Change Order Requests (COR), etc. Instead, the Contractor consistently relied on the Owner to review, edit, and provide quality control on the Contractor’s management and administrative Work. Holloway’s investigation found that the Contractor’s project administration and management services were severely deficient and substandard, and a primary source and cause of the delay to substantial completion.
DELAYS TO SUBSTANTIAL COMPLETION
This was a job that took over two-years to complete, versus the one-year required by the Contract, because the Contractor and its subcontractors failed to complete the Contract Work (1) when it was available to be performed, (2) at the required rate of performance and (3) according to the requirements of the Contract Documents.
The Contractor should have known within the first few months following Notice to Proceed (NTP) that it would not achieve the Contract’s January 2017 substantial completion date unless it applied much greater resources, which it failed to do. The Owner continuously notified the Contractor throughout the job that it was holding the Contractor responsible for delaying substantial completion. The record indicates that the Contractor made no discernable effort to add the resources necessary to expedite construction and achieve the Contract’s January 24, 2017, substantial completion date.
LACK OF CONTRACTOR ENTITLEMENT
In contrast to industry practices on projects where the contractor is convinced it has entitlement to a claim, the Contractor did not submit a single proper claim request document per the relevant Contract provisions during the job. Further, Holloway has not found a single subcontractor delay claim or formal request for additional time. And, we have not found a Contractor claim against a subcontractor, which is surprising because almost all of the Contractor’s key subcontractors performed poorly. Though the Contractor included its Contract Master Schedule in its subcontractor agreements, it did not require or ensure that the subcontractors actually perform to the Master Schedule or subsequent updates. There were no negative consequences for failing to do so. This of course would explain the subcontractors’ lethargic, untimely performance, and the absence of delay claims.