Developing Delay Analysis and EOT Skills in a Commercial Team

The situation

A contractor’s commercial team frequently reviews change requests, delay correspondence and potential extension-of-time matters. Team members understand commercial principles but have varying confidence interpreting programmes and discussing causation with planners.

The challenge

Without shared terminology and structured evidence habits, planning and commercial teams may reach different conclusions from the same event records. Training should bridge contract administration, schedule literacy and practical submission quality.

A practical approach

1. Set competency objectives

   Identify required capabilities in chronology building, programme interpretation, delay methodology and contract-aware communication.

2. Teach from worked examples

   Introduce representative delays, incomplete records and alternative causation narratives, making the limitations of each example explicit.

3. Practise collaborative review

   Use small-group exercises combining programme snippets, site records, notices and commercial questions.

4. Assess reasoning

   Use scenario-based questions and evidence-mapping tasks, with trainer feedback on assumptions and explanatory clarity.

Illustrative deliverables

• Illustrative training syllabus
• Event chronology and evidence exercise pack
• Scenario marking rubric
• Recommendations for continued learning and coordinated review

Key insight: Technical training should improve the quality of questions teams ask about programme evidence, while leaving contract-specific entitlement decisions to an appropriately qualified assessment.

Key lessons

• Distinguish entitlement, causation and quantification.
• Encourage planners and commercial professionals to review evidence together.
• Teach uncertainty and record limitations explicitly.