Forensic delay analysis

Forensic delay analysis is the after-the-fact examination of a project schedule to quantify how much delay occurred, when it occurred, and which party's events caused it — typically in support of a claim, dispute or litigation. Common methods include windows analysis (measuring critical-path slippage period by period against contemporaneous updates), time impact analysis or TIA (inserting delay events into the schedule to measure their effect), and but-for or collapsed as-built analysis (removing one party's delays to show what would have happened without them). Method choice matters because different techniques can attribute the same delay differently, and courts and boards scrutinize the approach. Clean, contemporaneous schedule updates and records are the raw material — projects with poor schedule discipline are far harder to defend in a delay dispute.

Related term: CPM (critical path method) scheduling