Construction claims in capital projects are on the rise and they need to be managed like the many other project management processes. Project owners need to have a formal and documented process for managing, monitoring, evaluating and reporting on the status of all claim submissions made by contractors.
Project Management Information Systems (PMIS) like PMWeb will be used to support the claim submissions management requirement. PMWeb custom form builder will be used to create the claim submission form which will have the fields to capture the claim cause and effect, details of the contractor’s entitlement for additional time and/or money, FIDIC contract clause that the contractor has based the entitlement on, checkboxes if the claim is considered to be for works that are out of the project scope of work, if it has cost impact and if it has schedule impact along with the project schedule activity that will be the first to be impacted by the submitted claim. The form will also have a field to capture the proposed counterclaim response. In addition, the form will have a table to capture the different time extensions and financial compensation proposed to settle the claim. For each proposal, there will be an ID, when it was proposed, a brief description of the proposal, proposed time extension and adjusted project completion date, financial compensation, and status of the proposal whether it was approved or rejected.
The form attachment tab will be used to attach the project documents and records that are related to each claim topic and the counterclaim response. Those documents will be uploaded and stored on the PMWeb document management repository. In addition, links to relevant PMWeb records and imported MS Outlook emails will also be included in the attachment tab.
As there could be different members in the project owner’s claim management team that could be located at different locations who have different responsibilities in the counterclaim response, the workflow module will be used to map the steps for submitting the claim topic, prepare the entitlement recommendation and prepare the final response. The workflow could include branches to align the workflow with the set authority approval levels. The workflow will also identify who has the authority for approving the final counterclaim response.
The information captured in the Construction Claim Form will become available for the claim management team to present in any desired form and format. The report could identify the reasons for those claims, which claims where due to additional scope of work, which claims have time and cost impact, claim cause and effect statement, claim entitlement and proposed counter claim response, which activity the claim impacts, the amount claimed by the contractor and the amount assessed by the counter claim among many others.
