5 Tips for Catching Construction Delays

As a contractor, it’s in your best interest to prevent construction delays, as they can stall an entire project. When a project is delayed, you reduce your brand equity and reduce the chances of clients wanting to work with your company. This may be true even in cases where factors that caused the delay are out of your control.

Because there’s a high probability that the project owner will blame the contractor for construction delays, you must find ways to catch and mitigate risk for a higher probability of success.

The effects of construction delays

Disputes

One effect of construction delays is that they may end in a legal dispute with the project owner. This mostly happens when there’s no clear distinction between your responsibilities and those of the project owner. For this reason, you’ll need to have a contract that exonerates you from delays caused by the project owner.

Time overrun

When a project is delayed by several months or years, it increases the overall cost of construction since you’ll have to spend more on labor and hired equipment such as cranes and heavy machinery. The project owner will also have to pay more in financing costs.

Reputational damage

Your company’s reputation will be affected if the project owner causes the delay. This boils down to a lack of a clear contract that clearly defines your roles and the roles of the project owner.  When there’s a penalty clause and non-performance by the project owner, you can seek legal redress and be compensated for lost income.

Abandonment

In some worst-case scenarios, property owners may decide to abandon a construction project. This mostly happens when construction delays cause the project to stall, making it expensive to revive.

Projects can be expensive to revive because of several factors, such as increased financing costs or design modifications.  

For contractors, construction delays can result in decreased satisfaction, resulting in negative ratings by clients.

5 tips for catching construction delays

To prevent construction delays, you’ll need to identify them before they affect the entire project. Here are some signs that you need to keep an eye out for to catch construction delays.

1. Use technology to catch risks

Risks include design errors and change orders made in the final phase of construction. If a change order is made, the contractor may see themselves having to redo an entire floor, which can be costly and overshoot the budget.

External risks that affect construction projects are tax challenges and compliance with local laws. Some local laws might require that you have an environmental audit done, which can cause delays. 

There are many ways to minimize risk, and the easiest is using construction optioneering platforms like https://www.alicetechnologies.com/product/manage. These platforms minimize risk by ensuring you can visualize the progress of your construction project. That way, you can catch and identify delays before they affect your project.

2. Identify budget conflicts

If your project begins being affected by budget conflicts, there’s a likelihood that a construction delay will happen. Budgetary conflicts in the construction industry can be caused by factors like under and overestimation.  

Underestimation can be caused by several factors, such as when the cost estimator uses the wrong pricing strategy or when external risks affect the project. An example of an external risk is inflation, or when an equipment-exporting country stops their deliveries. 

Though you cannot predict the future, it helps to devise mitigation strategies. You can also catch construction delays by identifying the type of change order made by the project owner. Some change orders cause delays because they’re expensive to implement.

3. Deal with labor shortages

As of October 2021, there were more than 400,000 unfilled positions in the construction industry. This labor shortage has spread across the country due to younger generations not wanting to join the construction industry. As a contractor, you need to identify this as an issue for your construction project and plan for it.

One way of solving this problem is improving working conditions for laborer retention. You can also attract workers by giving out free food and training to your workers. Identify your project’s needs and plan your labor resources effectively.

4. Reevaluate your project schedule

A project schedule plans how project activities will be organized to ensure that a project is completed on time. A good construction schedule should be easy to follow, with activities arranged in chronological order. 

Back then, project managers used hand-drawn bar charts, and this was not only inefficient, but made it difficult to track progress. These days, contractors use modern scheduling solutions like ALICE. When you have a project schedule powered by technology, it becomes easier to track completion rates, hold contractors accountable, and identify risks that can stall the project.

Therefore, to catch construction delays, you’ll need to continually monitor the progress of your schedule and come up with alternatives to deal with emerging risks.

5. Peer review the designs

Lastly, independent engineers can catch construction delays by ensuring that architectural designs have been peer-reviewed. Peer reviewing is the process of sharing your design with independent engineers and architects so they identify potential errors.

Errors can cause construction delays, especially when the designs need to be modified later. When working on a complicated design, don’t hesitate to have them peer-reviewed, because it might save you a lot of money.