Enhanced Daily Windows Delay-Analysis Technique

Abstract

Forensic schedule analysis is necessary to fairly apportion schedule delays and accelerations among project parties. Although each method in the literature has unique benefits, no single method provides a comprehensive schedule analysis, particularly when concurrent events by different parties cause multiday project delays and/or accelerations at different stages along the schedule. This paper, therefore, introduces an enhanced daily windows analysis (EDWDA) that combines the ability of the daily windows method to consider all critical path fluctuations, and the ability of the modified but-for method to analyze concurrent delays and accelerations. The EDWDA follows the day-by-day analysis of daily windows and, within each day, apportions multiday project consequence using the modified but-for method. To facilitate the application of EDWDA, a macro program was written on MS Project software and case studies were used to prove its ability to resolve the shortcomings of parent techniques. The EDWDA method is beneficial to both researchers and practitioners and contributes to developing a readily usable and comprehensive method for schedule analysis that produces accurate repeatable results to avoid disputes among project parties.