Delay Damages Prevention
PreventionOptional monthly check10 working days
Protect your position on late-completion charges with timely delay notices and records your team knows how to keep.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
Get a free report on your claim. About three minutes; no obligation.
The problem
Late access, information or other trades are holding up your work, while your team works around the delays without notifying them. You may already have paid delay damages and want a more reliable routine for the next job.
Already charged? See Delay Damages Claim. Also protecting a claim for delay costs? See Delay & Disruption Loss Prevention.
The solution
We map your subcontract’s delay rules, deal with notices still in time and train your team on a deadline and evidence routine. We test it on a live delay or month.
We handle notices and records. Delay analysis and programme advice need a programming specialist.
What you get
You receive a one-page guide to the delay rules and notice dates, supported by a deadline register, notice templates and a site-record checklist. We provide a written routine and test it on your job.
Includes a Handover Pack: key dates and sources, next steps, likely responses, scope limits and any ready-to-send letters.
Fee: Fixed set-up fee including the trial run, agreed before work starts. Optional monthly checks have a fixed fee agreed first. Pause between jobs or stop at month-end.
How it works
You tell us about your job
Start with a free call. Agree the scope, fixed fee and timetable in writing, then send the records listed below.
What you get: A written scope, fixed fee and timetable
- A
The signed subcontract
A complete PDF with all schedules and amendments, the completion dates or periods, the extension of time clauses and any damages rate included.
Where to find it: The commercial folder or the order email normally holds the signed copy.
Why we need it: Your subcontract, as amended, sets which events can extend your time and what notice each needs, when and to whom. It also sets what a late finish can cost you.
How we will use it: We boil its delay and extension of time rules down to the one page your team works to.
- B
The current programme and the completion dates you are working to
The latest issued programme for your works and any revised dates already agreed, as issued.
Where to find it: The planner's files, your main contractor's latest programme issue, or the site manager's copy.
Why we need it: A delay notice has to say what is being delayed and against which date, and the register is measured against the dates currently in force.
How we will use it: The dates go into the delay register as the baseline each notice and extension application refers to.
- C
Any delay notices or extension requests already sent, and the replies
As sent and received, with the emails that carried them, dates intact.
Where to find it: The commercial inbox, the site manager's sent items and the formal correspondence file.
Why we need it: What has already been notified, and what has not, decides where the register starts and which events may still be in time.
How we will use it: They seed the delay register, and any event still inside its notice period is flagged for action in the first week.
- D
The records your site team keeps now
Diaries, allocation sheets, access and information logs, photographs, as they are, not tidied up.
Where to find it: The site manager's diary, the day sheets in the site office and the photo folders on the team's phones.
Why we need it: An extension application rests on dated records: when access was given, when information arrived and what the team could not do. The routine has to build on what your people already keep.
How we will use it: The records routine asks your team to add as little as the subcontract allows to what they already do.
- E
Who on site spots a delay and who can send a notice
Names and roles: the site lead, the commercial lead, and who signs contractual letters.
Where to find it: This is rarely written down. A short email from you is enough.
Why we need it: Delay notices are missed when the person who sees the delay is not the person who sends the letter, and nobody owns the gap between them.
How we will use it: Every step of the routine gets a named person and a deputy, so a notice still goes out in time during a holiday fortnight.
Copies are fine. Send what you have and we will tell you what's missing.
- A
We find your deadlines
We put your subcontract's delay rules on one page, then check what has been notified so far. Any delay still in time gets its notice out first.
What you get: Your delay rules on one page, and what is still in time to notify
We set up your routine
A register that counts down every deadline, and notices ready to fill in. Your site team gets a list of what to watch for and record, and we walk them through it.
What you get: A delay register, notice templates and a checklist for your site team
You try it on a real delay
Your team runs the routine on a real delay, or for your next month on site, with us alongside.
We check it and hand it over
We check the trial run and put right anything missed. Then you get the routine in writing, and a monthly check from us if you choose.
What you get: The routine in writing: who spots a delay, who sends what, and by when
We leave you with a routine your team runs
Get a free report on your claim
Answer the questions below for a free PDF report by email. Allow about three minutes; choose “Not sure” where needed.
Your report explains where you stand, the next steps to take and the records to gather. It also sets out how we could help for a fixed fee, with no obligation.
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Already dealing with it? Delay Damages Claim.