Key takeaways
- An unreasonable baseline undermines the contractor's own claims as much as the owner's defence.
- Logic quality, float distribution and calendar accuracy decide whether later analysis is possible at all.
- Review and accept the baseline formally, in writing, with the exceptions recorded.
Why the baseline decides the dispute
Every prospective delay analysis measures impact against the baseline programme. If the baseline is not a reasonable representation of an achievable plan, the measurement is unreliable regardless of how carefully the impact is modelled — and both parties end up litigating the programme rather than the events.
That is avoidable. The problems that surface in year three are almost always visible in the first submitted programme, to anyone who reads it properly.
What a proper review tests
A schedule review is a technical examination, not a milestone-date check.
- Logic completeness — open ends, missing predecessors and successors, redundant relationships
- Constraint use — hard constraints substituting for logic, and their effect on the critical path
- Float distribution — negative float, and unexplained pools of float on work that is in reality tightly sequenced
- Calendars — working calendars, seasonal restrictions and shutdowns matching the contract and the region
- Durations and resourcing — durations supported by quantities and assumed productivity rather than by convenience
- Critical path plausibility — whether the driving path reflects how the work will actually be built
- Scope coverage — permits, approvals, utility relocations, commissioning and owner-supplied items represented
Accept it properly, in writing
Baselines are frequently used for years without ever having been formally accepted, which suits nobody once a dispute begins. The review should end in a written position: accepted, accepted with recorded exceptions, or returned with specified deficiencies.
Recording the exceptions is the valuable part. A documented reservation about a calendar assumption or a constrained milestone is worth considerably more three years later than a recollection that somebody raised a concern.
Then keep updating it honestly
A reviewed baseline is only useful if the updates that follow record progress as it actually occurred, with revisions to logic identified and explained rather than absorbed silently between updates.
That discipline is what makes a later forensic analysis a matter of weeks instead of months — and it is the same discipline that lets the project team see problems early enough to do something about them.
Written by Elite Analytics Advisory Practice. For advice on a specific project or claim, get in touch.
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