The extra work has pushed the job back. Can I get more time?

Get one thing straight first, because it changes how urgently you treat this: the extension of time mostly protects you, not the client. While the completion date sits where it is and the job runs past it, liquidated damages accrue against you week by week. Moving the date is how you turn that meter off. A builder who does not bother claiming time is volunteering to pay for delay someone else caused.

Three questions decide every claim

1. Is the delay one the contract gives time for? Standard forms carry a list of qualifying events, variations and late instructions, the client failing to give access, exceptionally bad weather, and the list is the contract’s, not a general principle. Which delays qualify and which do not has its own page; the short version is that delay caused by the client’s side usually qualifies and delay caused by yours never does.

2. Did you give notice the way the contract requires? Most forms require you to notify delay when it becomes apparent, some in a set form and time. This is where real claims die: not on the merits, on a notice served late or never. Treat the notice as reflex, short, written, sent when the delay starts, refined later.

3. Can you show the delay actually pushed completion? A week lost on a task that had slack behind it moves nothing. A week lost on the thing everything else waits for moves the whole job. Your evidence is the programme, however simple, and the site records: what was planned, what happened, what waited. On records worth keeping, see what actually counts as evidence.

Time and money are two different claims

An extension of time moves the date. It does not, by itself, pay you for the weeks of site costs the delay added: that is a separate claim for loss and expense, with its own contractual conditions, and mixing the two into one angry letter weakens both. Claim the time first, cleanly, because the damages shield matters most; put the money claim together on its own feet. And where the delay came from extra work, remember the work itself gets priced through the variation machinery, which is again separate from both.

On a job for someone living in the house

Extensions of time are contract machinery, not Construction Act machinery, so they work identically on a domestic job, if the contract has them. A one-page quote with a promised end date and no delay provisions leaves the position murky in both directions, which is one more argument for writing the quote properly. Where nothing is agreed and the client causes serious delay, the completion obligation can loosen, that is its own strange doctrine, and not one to rely on by choice.

What to do this week

1. If a delay is running now, notify it today, in writing, however briefly. The refined claim can follow; the date of the notice cannot be improved later.

2. Start the register: every delay event, its cause, its notice, its days. One table, kept as you go.

3. Check your current completion date against reality, and if the job will overrun, get the claim in before the date passes, not after the damages letter arrives.

Where the information stops

Whether a particular delay qualifies, and how many days it truly moved completion, are the two questions delay disputes are made of, and on a serious overrun with damages at stake, an hour with a construction professional before you submit the claim is worth more than any template.