Power Engineering Project Period Delay Claim Research

The electric power construction project is a complicated project involving a number of systems and specialties. In the long construction period, there are various unpredictable factors affecting the progress, quality and cost of the project, which will easily result in different kinds of delay events and further the delay in general progress. At present, domestic engineering market attaches more importance to the claims on cost and quality than those on delay in construction period, especially delays caused by the construction party. Most contractors focus on economic claim in the construction other than the claim on construction period, and some even know very little about it. The reason is that, on one hand, domestic contractors have an insufficient concept about claim on construction period, paying little attention to the value of time cost; on the other hand and more importantly, the existing common analysis method for construction period delay focuses on theoretical study without sufficient consideration to the difficulties in actual execution, and therefore there are few successful cases of claim on construction period delay.The traditional analysis method for construction period delay firstly analyzes the responsibility of every unit project where construction period delay happens, then determines responsible parties of delay events, and finally conducts comprehensive consideration on their effects on the delay in general construction period. Owing to the dominant status of the employer during the project execution, it is unable to determine the responsibility for a delay event timely after it happens. Hence, it is unpractical to determine the responsibility for all delay events before carrying out the work to the next step, and this is also the main reason for the difficult claims on construction period in domestic projects. This paper applies network method to analyze the relationship between construction period delay in unit project and the delay in general construction period. It improves the traditional responsibility determination process for construction period delay and the calculation method. There is no need to divide the responsibility for all delay events, but only to conduct a calculation by inputting the actual completion time of every unit project into the construction period network plan and obtain a new construction period network diagram and critical work path. Further it is to divide responsibility for critical work where delay happens in the critical path, and then the delay responsibility correspondent to each party in the project shall be achieved. By this way the quantity of delay events on which the contractor and the employer have disagreement shall be greatly reduced. The contractor shall be in a very favorable position in construction period claims by making use of claim provisions in the contract and laws and preserving relevant evident and demonstration documents. Based on a thermal power plant EPC project of a petroleum company in which the author has participated, this paper applies the above mentioned calculation method and principles, determines the original construction period plan and the critical path of actual construction period through network method, analyzes the delays in the critical path of actual construction period, and then determines the delay time which shall be undertaken by each party. It provides a scientific basis for claim on construction period for this project and obtains recognition of parties in the contract.