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Sponsored by ASCE Continuing Education and the Construction Institute (CI).

INSTRUCTOR: Bill Haydt

Purpose and Background

There always seem to be excuses for not being able to prove that a problem has caused the contractor to be inefficient. Owners often rightly complain that contractors don’t document the problem. Contractors often rightly complain that owner’s documentation expectation can be unreasonable. And both parties often refuse to acknowledge the legitimate concerns and limitations under which the other operates. This webinar will explore these issues using case studies of real projects, showing how the difficulties associated with documenting and evaluating inefficiency and how the problems illustrated by the case study can be avoided. Several case studies are employed on a variety of projects dealing with several issues associated with quantifying inefficiencies in construction.

This webinar will focus on the measurement of inefficiency on construction projects. Basic concepts will be introduced with case studies and real examples used to allow attendees to see how these concepts are actually used in practice. The following topics will be covered:

• Definitions of basic terms such as production, productivity, efficiency, and inefficiency
• Discussion of potential sources of inefficiency on a construction project
• Introduction to the legal foundation that must be established in order to recover the costs associated with inefficiency
• Discussion of the basic methods for measuring inefficiency, including the measured mile approach
• Review of case studies involving the quantification of inefficiency
• Damage calculations based on inefficiency analyses

The following learning outcomes have been established for webinar participants:

• Learn to define key terms related to the measurement of inefficiency on construction projects
• Ability to identify potential sources of inefficiency
• Gain ability to describe the legal foundation for recovery of costs due to inefficiencies
• Understand how to list and describe basic approaches to the measurement of inefficiency 
• Learn to calculate the damages associated with inefficiency

At the end of this webinar, you will be able to identify when conditions have been encountered that might affect the productivity of construction crews. They will know what data is needed in order to evaluate inefficiency. They will know how to use this data to quantity inefficiencies and price them.

• Engineers involved with the construction of buildings, roads, bridges, industrial facilities, stadiums, dams, hospitals, marine facilities, and other parts of the built environment
• Architects
• Construction managers and program and project managers
• Building officials
• Construction general contractor and subcontractor senior managers, project managers, and project engineers
• Legal counsel working in the field of construction

• Definition of terms
• Identification of potential sources of inefficiency
• Developing the legal foundation for recovering costs incurred due to inefficiencies
• Using the measured-mile approach and other techniques to quantifying inefficiency
• Case studies related to inefficiency
• Calculating the damages due to inefficiency

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