A project finishing late doesn’t, by itself, prove a delay claim — what has to be shown is a specific cause, timely notice of it, its effect on the critical path, and a number attached to that effect.
Standard-form contracts build the claims process into the document rather than leaving it to be argued from scratch each time. CCDC 16 is described by CCDC itself as "a guide document explaining the philosophy to changes embodied within CCDC documents, including key terms, the change process, methods for adjusting the contract price, and claims," which is the same machinery a delay claim runs through — a delay is priced and time-extended using the contract’s own change and claims provisions, not a separate freestanding process. That only works, in practice, if the party claiming the delay kept the kind of contemporaneous record Treadstone Law recommends for any construction claim: "keep dated notes of verbal instructions" and "track extras separately from the base contract so the value of each is clear" — advice that applies to a delay’s daily cause-and-effect record just as much as to a priced extra.
When the parties can’t agree the value of a delay themselves, Ontario’s adjudication regime under the Construction Act gives a fast route to a binding-until-overturned answer. ODACC states that "the Adjudicator will consider the evidence and make a decision (a ‘Determination’) within thirty days of the Claimant submitting its supporting documents," and that if the Adjudicator orders payment, "the payment must be made within fifteen days of the issuing of the Determination." A Determination is binding only until a court or arbitration reaches a final decision, but it gets money moving on a disputed delay claim in weeks rather than the months or years a full lawsuit can take.
A subcontractor’s crew is idle for eleven working days because the general contractor has not cleared a work area it was contractually responsible for. The subcontractor gives written notice of the delay on day two, as its subcontract requires, and logs the idle days against its own daily reports rather than folding them into a lump-sum claim at the end of the job. When the general contractor disputes the claimed cost, the subcontractor has what a delay claim needs: a documented cause outside its own control, timely notice, a dated record tying the idle days to the specific area of work affected, and a quantified daily cost for the idle crew — not just a schedule that finished eleven days later than planned.
See also: Certificate of substantial performance · Bonding capacity · Planning around weather delays with AI.
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