Florida Office:
Andrew Avalon, PE, PSP
Chairman & CEO
8633 Willow Kane Court
Orlando, FL 32835
aavalon@long-intl.com
T: (407) 445-0825 F: (407) 445-0821
Long International provides expert engineering and construction claims analysis, expert testimony, project management consulting, and insurance claims analysis services. Our focus is on heavy industrial projects including oil and gas, petroleum refining, petrochemical, chemical, mining/mineral processing, power, cogeneration, and other industrial projects. We analyze claims, not limited to, disputed change orders, schedule delay, acceleration, time extensions, liquidated damages, loss of productivity, defective specifications, and deficient project management performance.
Richard J. Long, P.E., P.Eng., Founder of Long International, has over 50 years of U.S. and international consulting experience involving construction contract disputes analysis and resolution, arbitration/litigation support and expert testimony, project management, engineering/construction management, cost and schedule control, and process engineering. As an internationally recognized expert in the analysis and resolution of complex construction disputes for over 35 years, Mr. Long has served as the lead expert on over 300 projects having claims ranging in size from US$100,000 to over US$2 billion. He has presented and published numerous articles on claims analysis, entitlement issues, CPM schedule and damages analyses, cumulative impact claims, and claims prevention.
Rod C. Carter, CCP, PSP is President of Long International and has over 20 years of experience in construction project controls, contract disputes and resolution, negotiations, mediation, arbitration support, and expert testimony on scheduling, loss of productivity, and quantum issues. He has experience in entitlement, schedule, and damages analyses on over 30 construction disputes ranging in value from US$100,000 to US$7 billion, related to oil and gas, oil refinery, LNG, heavy civil, nuclear, environmental, chemical, power, industrial, commercial, and residential construction projects. Mr. Carter is proficient in the use of Primavera P6 and P3 software, and he has extensive experience in assessing the impact to engineering and construction works of RFIs, change orders and other events. Mr. Carter specializes in loss of productivity, cumulative impact, and quantum calculations, and had a lead role in assessing damages on more than a dozen major disputes. In addition, Mr. Carter has developed cost and schedule risk analysis models using Monte Carlo simulations to address the uncertainty of estimates and claims.
Michael J. Vallez, P.E., MBA, LEAN SIX SIGMA is a Senior Principal with Long International and has over 40 years of hands-on and leadership experience in project management, engineering/construction management, cost and schedule control, change management, claims, and dispute resolution. He has served in executive management roles for both the owner and contractor working on world-class oil and gas, power, and international mining projects. Mr. Vallez has a proven ability to organize, integrate and manage the work of multi-disciplined technical specialists and project construction teams to achieve corporate financial goals and objectives of return on investment, safety, operational performance, cost, and time. In all, he has provided leadership on several billion dollars’ worth of projects in the chemical, heavy civil, mining, power, oil and gas, industrial, and commercial sectors. Mr. Vallez has written several books on the subjects of construction management, safety, and effective project leadership.
Changes can occur on almost every project and they often lead to delays and other negative impacts to the schedule and cost of a project. Large and complex engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) projects are particularly susceptible to the negative impacts caused by changes. Changes can cause delay and disruption to engineering, procurement, fabrication, transportation and delivery
Concurrent delay is a vexed and complex technical and legal issue. Construction contracts often do not expressly provide direction as to the parties’ agreement when there is concurrent delay. Most simply require the contractor to provide notice and specifics when an owner-responsible delay event occurs.
11/25/2020
· ConstructionMost construction contracts require written notice for changes, differing site conditions, extra work, or other events which may affect the contractor’s time and cost of performance. The process of giving “notice” is vital to triggering the contract mechanisms that allow the contractor to pursue additional time and cost and to reserve its rights to recover for any unforeseen...
10/21/2020
· ConstructionThe COVID-19 pandemic has changed the internal and external project execution environments. The pandemic has caused impacts of varying degrees to nearly every aspect of projects involving the activity of people. Ordinary practices in the creation of project documentation are robust and are utilized to support the analysis of construction claims. Although project productivity losses may be demonstrable, providing compelling evidence and proof that the losses were caused by the pandemic may not be as easy to demonstrate.
12/28/2019
· ConstructionAn As-Built But-For Schedule Delay Analysis (ABBF) is a retrospective CPM schedule delay analysis technique that determines the earliest date that the required mechanical completion activity, project completion activity, or various milestone activities could have been achieved but-for the owner-caused compensable delays that occurred during the project.
Contractor’s claim submittals and expert reports are often deficient in proving causation, i.e., the cause-effect linkage. These claims generally outline the owner-caused impacts and separately calculate quantum; however, the two are often not linked in any meaningful way. Most claims are settled prior to a decision by a panel, court, or board, and therefore these deficiencies are not made apparent. Yet, a well-prepared claim document which includes a persuasive and accurate causeeffect analysis can greatly improve the contractor’s chances of a successful recovery, either through negotiations or in arbitration/litigation. This analysis is difficult and often costly to prepare, and is therefore not performed in many disputes, which may be the reason why the claims fail.
The leader of a corporation or project is the individual who must ultimately be willing to take responsibility for results. Within the context of an organization or team made up of individuals, it is the collective performance of the individuals, as a team, that defines the results of the whole. While it can be said that the best motivation is internal motivation as opposed to external motivation, the leader is ultimately the one responsible for creating the conditions where motivation can thrive.
11/13/2017
· ConstructionTime is money especially on engineering and construction projects. Because delays in the completion of the project usually result in increased owner, engineer, and contractor costs, the overall time of performance is vital to the financial success of the project. The importance of time is evidenced by the significant role played by CPM schedules, completion dates, and milestones in the bidding and awarding of engineering and construction contracts. The desire to minimize costs and the time of performance often causes the occurrence of acceleration.
In the construction industry, it is largely agreed that overtime work adversely affects labor productivity. However, there is no universally accepted method for estimating the resulting loss of productivity, and many of the studies commonly used to estimate such losses have been subject to criticism by industry experts and the courts.
The Collapsed As-Built Windows Schedule Analysis (AACE® International Recommended Practice 29R-03, Method Implementation Protocol 3.9) is a modeled, subtractive, multiple-base method. It is a retrospective CPM schedule analysis which is typically used to prove entitlement for compensable delay and assess concurrency of delay within a window of time. The analysis simulates the as-built conditions within a schedule window and then delays are removed from the CPM model. If the forecasted project finish date “collapses” but-for or absent compensable delays, then entitlement for compensable time-related costs can be demonstrated. This article addresses the usage of the Collapsed As-Built Windows protocol and the advantages and disadvantages of the methodology.
The "discrete damages/cost variance analysis method" for quantifying construction claim damages involves the specific distribution of all costs incurred on the project rather than quantifying only certain parts of the cost or damage analysis as may be used in the other methods.
ABSTRACT - This paper provides guidelines to commercial construction cost engineers for the development of a plan for obtaining and utilizing subcontractor cost information for use in bidding, procurement, scheduling, change order management, and claim management. The paper is based upon personal field experience gained in cost engineering, scheduling, bidding, planning, contracting, and claim analyses.
A component of a construction claim often relates to the cost, quantity, and quality of the materials that the contractor installed on a project. The contractor frequently purchases these materials and agrees to install the quantities of materials on a unit price basis, i.e., a unit price that includes both the cost of the materials and the cost to install them.
12/17/2012
· ConstructionMost construction contracts, whether they are standard or customized forms, usually contain specific provisions related expressly to the process of giving "notice." The notice generally refers to an obligation on the part of the Contractor to notify the relevant party administering the contract, normally the architect, resident engineer, or owner's representative, of a claim or change event that gives rise to possible additional entitlement for time and/or cost.
The equitable allocation of responsibility for project delays is essential to the resolution of many construction disputes. Contractors frequently assert that they have been delayed for reasons beyond their control. Owners often remain unconvinced that the Contractor is legitimately entitled to a time extension or delay, acceleration and loss of productivity damages.
