Weather Delays

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Author Message John Hunter Senior Member Username: johnhunter Post Number: 23 Registered: 12-2005 Posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - 02:35 pm:    We've currently got language defining a quantity of adverse weather days per month (based on 100 year weather data for the project location) that the Contractor must include in their construction schedule, with the logic that the required quantity of adverse weather days must be exceeded before a weather delay claim can be submitted. We define this in "Construction Progress Documentation," but I'm wondering if there might be a better location. A related question: our "adverse weather days" currently relate only to rain delays. CALOSHA has recently put out guidelines related to heat injuries but without any real quantification. Has anyone ever had "heat days" come up as the basis for a delay? Nathan Woods, CCCA, LEED AP Senior Member Username: nwoods Post Number: 199 Registered: 08-2005 Posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - 02:40 pm:    I've never experienced heat delay days except when I was in boot camp and there were a few "Black Flag" days when it was too hot to mash us outside, so they creatively conspired to mash us indoors in unairconditioned buildings, bless their hearts :-) Regarding a proscribed number of weather delays, they are hard to enforce because WHEN they occur during the construction cycle is often more important than the frequency or severity. (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - 04:44 pm:    No "heat days" here in Texas where the temperature routinely exceeds 100 degrees F. in July and August; sometimes for many days in a row. Tom Good architect CDT, SCIP, www.VGBN.org Intermediate Member Username: tom_good Post Number: 4 Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - 08:35 pm:    John, to answer your original questions as to the best place to put the restriction on weather delays, it seems that, assuming you are using AIA A201, the Supplementary Conditions would be a better place to address A201.8.3 where acceptable delays are defined. 01 32 00 Construction Progress Documentation specifies administrative and procedural requirements for the Contractor's Construction Schedule. It does not deal with what constitutes reasonable delays. Seems like you should address it at the core General Conditions. What reference are you using for the 100 year weather data for the project location? John Hunter Senior Member Username: johnhunter Post Number: 24 Registered: 12-2005 Posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - 11:10 pm:    Tom - Actually, virtually none of our projects use the AIA agreements, which is probably why this requirement got into this Section (this office master predates my arrival at the firm). I checked the language and it's only 50 years of data, and we reference Western Regional Weather Center (we're located north of San Francisco): www.wrcc.dri.edu/summary/climsmnca.html. Thanks for the suggestion - I'll take a look at the General and Supplemental Conditions for a possible new location. John Bunzick, CCS, CCCA Senior Member Username: bunzick Post Number: 703 Registered: 03-2002 Posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - 08:57 am:    One difficulty with this approach is exactly as you suggest with the comment regarding "heat days," and that is exactly what constitutes a weather delay. I worked on a project that was delayed because of minor amounts of rain and especially snow nearly every days for many weeks at the time of structural steel erection. However, the ironworkers could not safely work on wet and "frozen" steel. This, of course, delayed all subsequent work. Another situation was a period of very heavy rain that oversaturated soils in the playing field and parking lot locations. The site contractor couldn't work for weeks in that soup. Which of these conditions counts towards the x-number of days of bad weather? I prefer to let the contractor make their own claim based on the particulars of the project, without a fixed number. In the first case above, they did just that, producing data from the National Weather Service over a period of years regarding number of days with precipitation during the particular season. They were successful. Tom Good architect CDT, SCIP, www.VGBN.org Advanced Member Username: tom_good Post Number: 5 Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - 09:41 am:    CORRECTION - I posted that 8.3 might be the best place to define whether delays in AIA A201. Upon further review, I find that 4.3.7.2 is where delay claims "be documented by data that conditions were abnormal and could not have been anticipated." "Abnormal" is not defined — contractors are at liberty to decide for themselves what evidence will best demonstrate abnormal weather. I got this from an article which addresses the subject at http://www.jordanschrader.com/articles/article0259.html. It seems that all one really needs to do, if using, AIA A201, is define what “Abnormal” means. For instance, might one state as an addition to 4.3.7.2: “Abnormal in the above clause shall be defined to mean temperature, humidity, precipitation, or wind conditions which are more than 50% above or below past ten year average monthly or daily conditions as recorded by the National Weather Service at the closest location to the site for the period of time which caused the delay.” This is a blind guess at language to use, as I have no experience with what actual language might be used. Might not be worth opening this can, as I have never had such a claim. George A. Everding, AIA, CSI, CCS, CCCA Senior Member Username: geverding Post Number: 300 Registered: 11-2004 Posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - 11:14 am:    This discussion is about defining weather days in the project manual, but it is also important to have a defined mechanism for tracking proscribed weather days. In my CA days, "weather days" was an agenda item in the bi-weekly progress meetings. The "claim" was essentially the contractor's accounting of weather days in the previous two weeks, and agreement within the progress meeting of how many of the claimed days were allowable. We were able to track actual allowed weather days against the weather days budgeted in the contract, and never had a weather dispute that left the jobsite trailer, much less that lingered on for the length of the job. I think we defined “weather days” in the supplementary conditions, both in terms of what they were and how many were allowed. The mechanism for tracking was either in “Project Management and Coordination” (under progress meetings) or in “Construction Progress Documentation” (under construction schedule), I forget which. Of course, these projects were multi-family residential, wood frame, where the major weather delay issues occurred during site prep work, and we also had the benefit of a full-time geotech engineer who was onsite every day. At the progress meeting table, his opinion on weather days carried a lot of weight in being fair to both owner and contractor. Anne Whitacre, FCSI CCS Senior Member Username: awhitacre Post Number: 524 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - 02:58 pm:    I've typically used a 10 year average, and cited the NOAA weather station nearest the project site for the data for the "typical" weather for the site. I think a 50 year average is a little extreme, but the 10 year average has worked successfully on the projects I've been with. You need to get a reasonably close source -- on the west coast, there are so many micro climates that citing weather statistics from 30 miles away may be completely irrelevant, especially if there are substantial elevation and/or exposure changes. I would think that heat delays would be covered by the local OSHA equivalent; I know in Arizona there are often restrictions on when people can work; and I've also seen "heat index" numbers used in the southeast where you can get slammed by heat and humidity.