Abstract

*Najib E. Sali, Mahathir V. Anwar and Razif Idlan

Delay is acknowledged as the most common, costly, complex and risky problem encountered in construction projects. Different project scheduling and planning techniques would have different approaches of assessment of extension of time (EOT). Hence, this research aims to (a) review the legal positions in Malaysia with regards to EOT assessment and (b) evaluate the contractors ‘entitlement to EOT from case studies in Malaysia. Literature study was carried out for the first objective whereas two real-case studies on different delay analysis methods were investigated later. Subsequently, three legal experts of construction claims were interviewed. The literature showed that the courts and arbitration tribunals have not generally gone into great depths for EOT assessment and delay analysis. The experts, considering the second objective, delivered a unanimous opinion that both cases were weak in terms of the entitlement for EOT due to the issue of concurrency of the delaying events and the lack of accuracy of the work programme.