Under Construction – September 2017

Letter from the Editor

Welcome to the fall 2017 edition of our Under Construction newsletter. We hope your summer has left you relaxed and refreshed to make the final push to successfully finish out the remainder of the year.

In this issue, we highlight several topics affecting the construction industry, such as the new standard for schedule delay analysis that the American Society of Civil Engineers recently published. The standard includes 35 guidelines generally reflecting engineering principles associated with schedule delay analysis and the standards of practice in the construction industry nationally. This new standard is addressed in the first article.

“Pacing delays” are non-critical delays that occur when one party makes a conscious decision to decelerate or slow down the pace of non-critical activities to keep pace with the critical delays of another party. Our second article discusses this “why hurry up and wait?” pacing concept, how it has been analyzed by the courts, and the complications that may arise when claiming or defending against a pacing delay.

Additional topics in this edition include what you should be paying attention to when dealing with change orders, an arbitrator’s ability to exercise authority over non-signatories to a contract containing an arbitration clause in Nevada, a recent case out of California that demonstrates that an arbitration provision in a contract may properly provide parties with the ability to appeal an arbitrator’s decision and a discussion of a recent ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court that contract privity is not required for a successful party to recover attorneys’ fees on a breach of implied warranty claim.

We hope you will find these articles informative and enlightening. Please let us know if you want us to address a specific construction issue in a future newsletter. We hope you have a profitable, busy and safe fall season!

Regards,
Jim Sienicki

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