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Title:

Can Prolongation Costs be claimed when there is no Entitlement to an

Extension of Time?

Author:

Andy Hewitt

Date:

12 March 2016

It is generally accepted that, in a situation where a contractor is entitled to an extension of time,
he is also entitled to claim for time-related costs for site overheads and head office running
costs for the additional time that he was obliged to remain on site. This is based upon a
fundamental principle of law, that a party who has been prevented from performing his
obligations by the other party, is entitled to compensation to put him back into the position that
he would have been in, had the act of prevention not occurred. In construction terms, this
usually means the reimbursement of the contractors costs for providing site management, site
establishment, plant and equipment, insurances, additional financing costs and the like and
head office costs, which are often referred to as prolongation costs for the extended time.
Are there situations, however, that a contractor may legitimately claim for the payment of costs
when an extension of time is not warranted? Well, yes there are. Consider the following
example.
The contractor is constructing a high-rise building and has a tower crane on site, which his
programme shows is to be removed on a certain date. The contractor however receives a
variation order to change the specification of the air-conditioning chiller, which is located on the
roof of the building and needs to be hoisted into position by the tower crane. The change to the


chiller requires modifications to be made at the factory where the chiller is being manufactured
and this will delay the delivery of the chiller to a date later than the date by which the contractor
had planned to remove the crane.
The contractor will therefore incur additional costs in hiring (or depreciation costs of) the tower
crane, the crane operator and safety checks and maintenance, from the time that he should
have been able to remove the crane, to the date that he was able to hoist the chiller into
position.
There is a direct linkage of the cause, i.e. the variation, to the effect, which is the additional
time-related costs for the tower crane.
The costs here could either be claimed with the variation for the chiller, or submitted as a
discrete claim.