With the excessive inclement weather between 2021 and 2022, due to La Nina weather patterns, Zancon observed lost time on building projects of up to 40% of the available work time.
Many construction or development programmes that spanned the 2021 to 2022 period, would typically have had an allowance of 10% to 20% additional time allowance for the effects of rain, wind and heat based on historical mean weather data in the preceding 20 years.
This means that for a project of 24 months, there is currently a likely time overrun of around 5 months, depending of course on the stage of works at which the project was at when the worst of the 2022 rain hit.
An awareness of these impacts have led many Developers and Contractors to ask the question of 'what extra time do we allow for inclement weather time related risks?'.
Zancon are not meteorologists and do not profess to predict the weather patterns! Many have tried and continue to fail at this...
There have long been recognised methods for modelling the time risks associated with inclement weather and making appropriate allowances based on the exposure of risk that certain events cause at different phases of a construction project, such as Monte Carlo simulations. However, once this data is analysed, the question still remains, 'what extra time do we allow for inclement weather time related risks?'
Zancon is advocating that developers run these Monte Carlo simulations on their development programmes to allow suitable developers contingency to cover a scenario of increased inclement weather, as well as other developer 'known unknown' risks.
Furthermore, put as part of their tender criteria a requirement for the contract to demonstrate:
- How they have calculated inclement weather risk
- Explain how they will transparently manage the expenditure of that inclement weather time allowance
- Explain what practical site contingency planning they will implement at different stages of the project
- Propose how the parties can contractually deal with extraordinary inclement weather events.
These measures will arm the parties with an umbrella to help weather the storms.
Please get in contact with us if you would like us to assist with risk modelling of inclement weather time risk allowances, or how to best manage programme and inclement weather contingency.
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