Who Benefits from Construction Verification?
Volume I - Dispute Resolution

There's a reason why developers set aside as much as 17% of major construction project budgets for post construction claims, disputes and litigation. It's because they'll need it. When developers, contractors and other interested parties fall into dispute over the as-built condition of a project, a resolution can be a long time in coming.

The discovery process alone can drag on for many months, if not years. Why does discovery take so long? The heart of the answer lies in the breakneck speed at which projects are constructed these days. In our experience, we have seen construction commence with as little as 30% of the design completed (most are in the 50 – 70% range.) The balance of the design is completed on the fly as construction progresses.

As change orders pile up, the stress on the schedule builds, leading to a heightened level of exposure for the principle players on the project. “Less critical” change orders fall through the cracks and standard documentation practices suffer. This leads to rapid-fire decisions being made informally and under duress. A construction manager with a looming milestone isn’t thinking about a non-existent deposition two or three years down the road. He’s trying to get his PT deck poured on time!

However, when a dispute arises months or years later, the attorneys investigating the matter are going to need to recreate the events surrounding the dispute. More often than not, there will not be sufficient data to support either party’s claim, which means that an arbiter, mediator or judge will be asked to sift through countless pages of conflicting testimony based on the recollection of those involved with the project. This is hardly a situation that either disputing party can feel confident about.

Construction Verification removes the cloud of uncertainty that can envelope a stressed job site. By recording the existence, condition and timing of every significant operation at a job site, there is no need to rely on a series of individual recollections to recreate the situation surrounding a disputed event. With a timeless, irrefutable record of the facts, the long discovery process is reduced to the time it takes to retrieve the necessary information from a database, thus allowing the disputing parties to address the resolution for the matter at hand without delay.