The article written by Andrew Dick, Project Risk Management Consultant, Arcadis titled “7 items you should document to prepare for COVID-19 delay claims” identifies the documents that need to be made available for any future delay analysis to allow decision-makers to determine the merit, magnitude, and compensability of any submitted COVID-19 delay claims.
The seven items identified in the article are (1) Decrees or orders issued by local, state and/or federal authorities, (2) Internal decisions made to shut down the project, (3) Extra work required to shut down, (4) Work you can no longer perform, (5) Continuing work, (6) Extra work required to start-up and (7) Employment records. For details of those seven items, please check this article.
Using a Project Management Information System (PMIS) like PMWeb will enable organization to collect and document all those items in a structured and comprehensive format to make them available for any future delay analysis. To start with, the PMWeb document management repository will be used to create a new folder called COVID-19 to fulfill the requirements of the first item which is to document all decrees or orders issued by local, state, and/or federal authorities issued to direct the contractor what to do, how long the contractor had to do it, and all the associated costs of meeting the requirements.
The second item to document for COVID-19 delay claims is all internal decisions made to shut down the project. The PMWeb custom form builder will be used to document and keep track of when a shutdown was ordered and for how long. The form will also include any decisions or discussions with authorities as well as those between the owner, contractors, suppliers, vendors, and designers.
All supportive documents can be attached to the form. Those documents can be either stored in the PMWeb document management repository or directly uploaded to the record if needed. In addition, links to other relevant project communications and imported MS Outlook emails stored in PMWeb can be also made.
In addition, a workflow can be assigned to the form to formalize the submit, review and approval process. The workflow will detail the sequence of tasks to be performed by the different project team members as well as the actions that can be taken by each.
For the remaining five items which include documenting all extra work required to shut down, work that can no longer be performed, work that the contractor is able to continue working on, extra work required to start up and employment records, the PMWeb daily report module will be used to capture this information. The work detail tab of the daily report will be used to record all originally planned work as well as extra work. A user defined code will be added to identify additional work required to shut down, planned work that can no longer be performed, planned and new work that the contractor is able to continue working on and extra work required to start up.
The timesheet tab of the daily report will be used to capture the details of all resources who have worked during the COVID-19 impact period as well as idle resources. For each resource entry, which will be by the resource name, the list will detail when the resource has worked by providing the start and finish time and whether or not they worked remotely to fulfil the Work At Home (WAH) requirement. The daily report will also record other work clearances, like cases where self-isolation or quarantine were needed and when an employee returned to work.
Similar to all other PMWeb records, all supportive documents can be attached to the daily report. Those documents can be either stored in the PMWeb document management repository or directly uploaded to the daily report if needed. In addition, links to other relevant project communications and imported MS Outlook emails which will be stored in PMWeb can be also made.
