One of the key challenges that faces organizations involved in delivering capital projects when preparing or defending construction claims is how to ensure that their submission or response is complete and well supported to avoid the delays associated with incomplete or unsubstantiated claim submissions.
One of the proven best practices is to create construction claims analysis checklists that are specific for each claim type. In an article titled “Construction Claims Analysis Checklists” published by “Richard J. Long, PE and Rod Carter, CCP, PSP”, the authors provided examples of the proposed checklists for Claim Analysis Related to Schedule Delays and Claim Analysis Related to Quantities, Manhours and Costs. Each one of those two checklists provided details of items that need to be covered in the claim preparation of defending those two types of construction claims. Of course, there could be many other checklists to cover the different categories of construction claims.
Using a Project Management Information System (PMIS) like PMWeb, organizations can create those checklists to verify that all items needed to be covered in preparing or defending a claim had been done in a complete and proper format. PMWeb custom form builder will be used to create those checklists which can be modified to reflect the requirements for each claim category based on their past experience and knowledge.
Using the attachment tab, all relevant documents which presumably are available in PMWeb document management repository must be attached to the checklist form. In addition, all PMWeb records referred to in the checklist need to be also linked to the form. The same will apply to email communications which again presumably where imported into PMWeb email repository.
It is highly recommended to assign a workflow for the Claim Analysis Checklist as some of the checklist items could be assigned to different project team members such as planners, site engineer, quantity surveyor, legal, etc. In addition, there could be need for a formal process to review and approve the checklist completion which will be detailed in the workflow process.
