Time is Money - Don’t Be Afraid of the “D” Word — WMG Construction

Time is Money - Don’t Be Afraid of the “D” Word

By Brian Weinbaum, Scheduling Manager at WMG

I have worked in development and construction for nearly 20 years total, and spent the first 15 years in operations/project management for two large General Contractors and a developer. More recently, I shifted my focus to Project Controls and Scheduling. Today, I lead a team of five schedulers at WMG, and over the past few years, we've been involved in scheduling for roughly 25 projects.

One trend I’ve noticed in these discussions is that both General Contractors and Owners seem to get very uncomfortable when anyone uses the "D" Word.

Why Do We Avoid Talking About Delays?
When I was a project manager, I was as guilty of this as anyone. Early in my career, I was taught to notify the owner whenever an issue came up that could result in additional costs. That process was relatively simple, especially on large public projects where a "potential change notification" form was standard. I would then gather cost proposals from subcontractors, review and compile them, and submit a change order to the owner.

But while I must have submitted hundreds of Change Order Requests in my career, I can count on one hand the number of times those requests included a specific request for additional time or modifications to official contract milestones.

Why Is Time Different Than Cost in Construction?
When discussing potential impacts to schedules with project teams, I often hear things like “we don’t really know how long that will take, so let's not add that yet" or "we should be able to make up that time”. But why do we think about time differently from cost?

Do you ever know exactly how much it will cost to complete additional work based on design changes? No. Yet, in the construction industry, most contractors are comfortable submitting estimated costs and accepting some uncertainty in the final number. That same comfort rarely exists when it comes to submitting or requesting time for schedule impacts.

I believe this comes down to comfort and familiarity. It seems that even entry-level Project Engineers or Estimators can review supplier quotes, check labor hours, and confirm overall math and markups to ensure a change order is reasonable. But even experienced Project Managers often don’t understand exactly how time impacts should be properly entered, analyzed, and justified within a schedule.

I do also understand that deadlines and milestones matter on all projects, and especially for schools, student housing, and multifamily residential projects tied to external dates and commitments. In these cases, Owners will almost always look for opportunities for acceleration or other mitigation methods in order to hit those dates even after delays have occurred. At that point, schedule impacts are effectively exchanged for cost impacts. Proving once again that money equals time.

The Real Cost of Ignoring Schedule Impacts
If the contractor hasn’t properly notified the owner of time impacts along the way, recovering those costs is substantially more difficult, and the discussions and negotiations are always much more difficult.

Recently, I’ve seen this become a major issue on multiple projects where delays weren’t properly documented. And often there is no one major delay event; it’s usually “death by a thousand cuts.” Even when regular schedule updates are completed, they often show activities slipping a few days week to week, or new tasks added for design changes, without clear tracking of why those deviations occurred.

While we consistently encourage our clients to share this information so it can be incorporated into updates, many are reluctant. Instead, teams often hope to “make up time” later, which is only taking on additional risk.

On these projects, we are often tasked with developing Time Impact Analyses (TIAs) to justify schedule impacts after the fact. This process typically involves reviewing RFIs, daily reports, weather logs, and notifications to retroactively piece together what happened. It’s doable, but it’s far more work than documenting impacts as they occur, and it makes the analysis less accurate and harder to defend when the Owner pushes back (which they usually do).

My Recommendation
My recommendation is simple: Treat time as money. Don't be afraid to call something a "Delay" and provide notification and formal requests for time extension in accordance with your contract.

If you’re comfortable asking the Owner for additional money when it's warranted, you should also be comfortable showing that events have caused schedule impacts. And trust me, having been on the Owner’s side of the table in many of these discussions, a reasonable Owner will appreciate the transparency and open discussion when there is still time to react and make informed decisions. You don’t want to have that discussion when it is already too late.

If you need help implementing better practices for tracking delays in your schedule, please reach out. We can help. And if you’re already behind and struggling to justify delays, we can help with that too. No judgment here.