British Columbia's answer to "what can I recover, and how do I prove it" is actual cost, proved. The province has no formula jurisprudence, no measured mile applied by name, no equipment-standby authority, and no judgment at all on delay-analysis methodology. What it does have is a Supreme Court of Canada overhead case from 1964, a total-cost gateway from a 1987 first-instance judgment, and an acceleration line whose leading authority may not be an acceleration authority.
That last point is the reason this page exists in its current form. The corpus previously carried Golden Hill Ventures Ltd v Kemess Mines Inc as the leading Canadian acceleration authority. It probably is not one. The correction is set out first below, because it changes what a BC claimant should plead and because the error is in circulation.
Everything that follows sits on the same evidentiary footing as the rest of the British Columbia extension-of-time cluster: no BC judgment was read in original text, so every case proposition rests on two or more independent secondary sources and carries no holding pinpoint. The pan-Canadian quantum backdrop. The two national overhead data points, the formula critiques, the absence of any Canadian global-claim vocabulary, sits on the Canada prolongation and delay costs page and is not repeated here.
What a BC contractor recovers for delay, and how it must prove it
Actual cost, proved. BC's recoverable heads are the ordinary ones, extended site overhead, unabsorbed head-office overhead, disruption, acceleration cost but the province supplies almost no methodology for computing them. Its overhead authority works from audited cost, its out-of-pocket measure comes from Hawl-Mac Construction Ltd v Campbell River (District), and its one formal shortcut, total cost, is a last resort with a three-part gateway.
The practical consequence is that a BC quantum case is built from the contractor's own records rather than from authority. That is a different exercise from the one an English, Ontario or US practitioner is used to running. There is no BC decision to cite for a standby rate, no BC decision endorsing a named productivity method, and no BC decision stating a standard of proof for delay quantum. The gaps are searched findings, not research failures, and they are set out individually below because knowing which arguments have no BC support is more useful than a list of heads.
Nothing in that picture changes when the Construction Prompt Payment Act is proclaimed. What changes is the route and the timing. Adjudication becomes available, but only for contracts entered into after commencement so essentially every BC contract live on 10 August 2026 will never be subject to BC adjudication. And the holdback period moves from 55 days now to 46 days after proclamation under Builders Lien Act s 8, while the 45-day lien filing period at s 20 is unchanged. Do not print 46 for lien filing. When adjudication does arrive, delay is adjudicable in substance through the change-order and valuation heads: s 16 expressly covers approved and proposed change orders, which is wider than Ontario, but declaratory time relief is uncertain. It is neither in scope nor out of scope, the corpus records the question as open.
The correction: Golden Hill Ventures is probably not an acceleration authority
Golden Hill Ventures Ltd v Kemess Mines Inc, 2002 BCSC 1460 is a BCSC trial judgment principally on tender disclosure and differing site conditions. Its section on time for completion (paras 876–926) is cited in secondary literature for acceleration of parts of the work, the acceleration holding is against the primary text. That is the formula the corpus now directs, and it should be used in that form.
The basis for the correction is the decision's own digest classification, which carries no acceleration topic at all. The topics recorded are tender duty of care, duty of disclosure and negligent misrepresentation, soil conditions and implied terms as to design, suitability and accurate information, implied terms as to permits, good faith in performance, punitive damages for intimidation and duress, negligent misrepresentation damages, and builders' liens. The only scheduling topic is "Completion. Time for completion", 51 paragraphs of a judgment running past para 1170.
What the case decides is a disclosure case. A remote north-central BC mine site, the owner had geotechnical investigations over several years, including test pits at a site investigated for a tailings storage facility. That site was later chosen for the airport, and the report was not disclosed to tenderers. The owner was held obliged in a tender situation to disclose the best information it can provide regarding a project, and its risk-allocation clauses did not relieve it. Damages exceeded CAD 7 million, for changed ground conditions and non-disclosure, not for acceleration.
The acceleration characterisation traces to a single article by a non-Canadian firm, which also misspells Stephenson and misattributes the constructive-acceleration elements. The decision's afterlife in the literature is as a disclosure and site-conditions case: that is how a geotechnical-society conference paper and firm commentary on owners' duties of care cite it. Two further points are recorded as s. No source attributes any acceleration quantum, loss-of-productivity or measured-mile holding to Golden Hill, and no citator list could be built. Whether the decision has been followed, distinguished or doubted since 2002 is unresolved.
The correction rests on a digest classification, not on the judgment. Paragraphs 876–926 should be pulled before Golden Hill is deployed for anything to do with time: and paras 447–464, the implied-term-as-to-permits topic, are the closest BC material there is to permitting delay as an owner-risk event.
Acceleration in BC, the Morrison-Knudsen line, and elements you cannot plead
Prefer the Morrison-Knudsen line as the anchor. Morrison-Knudsen Co v British Columbia Hydro & Power Authority supplies the definition acceleration is "speeding up the work" or "increasing the rate of performance" to overcome delay, and the constructive-acceleration idea: where the owner refuses an extension despite clear owner-caused delay, the contractor remains legally bound to the original deadline, and if it must accelerate to meet that deadline the owner may be required to pay the extra cost. The substance is confirmed by two independent sources.
The citation is not. The best available is [1978] 4 WWR 193 (BCCA), and it is and single-source. Never print the DLR citation that circulates for this case. A dedicated search found no support whatever for it, and the corpus has withdrawn it. Print the WWR citation marked single-source, or print no citation at all. Two name collisions make the search harder than it should be: Morrison-Knudsen International Co v Commonwealth of Australia, the Sydney Opera House pre-contractual-representation case, is a different decision, and a large body of unrelated US Morrison-Knudsen litigation pollutes the results.
Now the part that will change a submission. The elements of constructive acceleration in Canada are not settled. Two competing four-part formulations circulate, attributed respectively to Morrison-Knudsen and to W A Stephenson, and both are single-source, neither with a pinpoint.
Formulation A
Attributed to Morrison-Knudsen
An excusable delay, timely notice of it. A formal request for an extension of time. And actual acceleration costs incurred after the owner refuses reasonable accommodation. , single-source, no pinpoint.
Formulation B
Attributed to W A Stephenson
An excusable delay exists. The owner refuses to accept it, the owner insists on the original completion dates, and the contractor expends additional resources to maintain the compressed timeline. , single-source, no pinpoint.
Both are recognisably the US federal constructive-acceleration test in Canadian dress, and it is entirely possible that neither BC judgment states the point as a numbered test, that the "elements" are the commentators' synthesis rather than anything a BC court has said. A submission asserting that "the Canadian courts require the following elements for constructive acceleration" is currently unsupportable from any verified source. Record both attributions, assert neither. If the elements are to be used at all, they should be framed as the structure the commentary uses, not as a test the court has adopted.
There is a second reason not to lean on the doctrine in BC. Acceleration is independently recoverable as reasonable mitigation, which does not depend on an underdeveloped doctrine at all: it requires the owner's breach and the reasonableness of the contractor's response. That framing is developed for Canada generally and is the stronger route in a province with no verified elements to plead.
Head-office overhead, BC is a Shore & Horwitz jurisdiction, not an Eichleay one
Shore & Horwitz Construction Co Ltd v Franki of Canada Ltd, [1964] SCR 589 is the foundation, and it works from actual audited cost by two routes: average monthly overhead multiplied by the months of delay, and overhead expressed as a percentage of out-of-pocket expenses, 4.99% on the facts. The circulated formula, overhead and profit multiplied by days of delay and divided by contract duration, is a practitioner gloss and is not the Supreme Court's holding. Presenting it as such is a citation risk, and it is corrected on the Canada page.
Whether BC recognises Eichleay is a that resolves toward "no, but not hostile".
| Position | What it says | Standing |
|---|---|---|
| A, one firm survey | Shore & Horwitz and Eichleay Corp are both recognised, with recovery limited to overhead the contractor could not absorb through other work. The three-step allocation is set out | , single survey |
| B, the BC case law as it reads | BC requires actual cost in the Shore & Horwitz sense, formulae are an evidentiary shortcut, not an entitlement | The reading the corpus prefers |
Layer: jurisdictional, resolving an internal conflict. Row A rests on the secondary tier and on a single survey, row B is an inference drawn from the BC authorities as a whole and is flagged as inference, not record.
The defensible statement is this. BC's foundation is Shore & Horwitz proof of the contractor's actual overhead burden, expressed either as an absolute monthly rate or as a percentage of direct cost. Eichleay-style formulaic allocation is referred to in Canadian commentary and is not prohibited, but no BC judgment was located adopting Eichleay by name, and the "unabsorbed" precondition, that the delay prevented the contractor taking on replacement work, is treated as part of the burden of proof.
No BC judgment applies Hudson, Emden or Eichleay by name. Lead with actual cost. Offer a formula, if at all, as a cross-check that the actual-cost figure is not aberrant, never as the primary case.
Total cost, the BC gateway, and a citation conflict now resolved
Total cost is available in BC, and the authority is W A Stephenson Construction (Western) Ltd v Metro Canada Ltd, (1987), 27 CLR 113 (BCSC). as to its terms, the court accepted the method and the contractor recovered the difference between bid and actual costs. The gateway is last resort where detailed records are unavailable, on a three-part proof.
The first limb, and the first place an owner's expert will aim. A bid that was low by strategy rather than by estimate collapses the whole claim, because the difference between bid and outturn then measures the bid error rather than the delay.
The second limb, and the second clean line of attack. Total cost imports every inefficiency the contractor caused itself unless the costs are shown to be reasonable.
The causal limb. It is the limb that a records failure most often defeats, and the reason total cost is a last resort rather than a shortcut.
The gateway condition. Total cost is not an election. A contractor that could have kept discrete cost records and did not is asking the court to excuse its own record-keeping.
The level-of-court is RESOLVED, and both decisions are real and different. Attribute the three-part total-cost test to the BCSC decision, (1987), 27 CLR 113, every secondary stating the test cites that report, and a total-cost analysis is a trial-level exercise. Cite the 1986 BCCA decision separately: Hutcheon JA, 20 March 1986, registry CA005467, unreported, nature of the appeal unconfirmed, CHL decision numbers 6D-15905 and 6D-15905a, obtainable from Courthouse Libraries BC on document request. A March 1986 appellate decision cannot be the appeal from a 1987 first-instance judgment, the most likely reading, supported by a companion ruling on an application to adduce further evidence, is that the 1986 decision was interlocutory or procedural.
Spelling is a live trap. The case is indexed as Stephenson by Courthouse Libraries BC and CLEBC, and as Stevenson (W.A.) Construction (Western) Ltd in the CLR report and in the cases-cited list of Golden Hill. Secondary sources split roughly evenly. Search both spellings, a researcher who searches only one will conclude the other is a phantom.
The same decision carries a notice holding that is doing significant work elsewhere in this cluster: meeting minutes documenting the contractor's concerns about delay and access constituted sufficient notice without formal written notice in the contractual period, and the owner waived strict compliance by its conduct, its position being "purely technical". That is developed on the BC notice and time bars page.
The heads with no BC authority: productivity, standby, and the standard of proof
Four of the arguments a claims consultant reaches for first have no BC authority whatever. Each is a searched finding.
| Head | The BC position |
|---|---|
| Loss of productivity / measured mile | No BC judgment applies a measured mile by name. National commentary describes it as the most convincing method, comparing the actual cost of the disrupted work against normal productivity on unaffected portions of the same project. And acknowledges the difficulty of quantification. , national survey |
| Equipment standby | No BC decision on recoverability or on the rate basis: owned versus rented, depreciation versus rental rate, published-rate schedules. Nothing |
| Prolongation cost methodology | No BC decision articulating a prolongation methodology distinct from general damages for breach. What BC has is Hawl-Mac, where out-of-pocket expenses were recovered. An actual-cost measure, not a time-related-cost rate |
| Standard of proof for quantum | No BC judgment states a distinct standard for delay quantum. No "reasonable certainty" formulation, and no BC application of the Penvidic Contracting Co v International Nickel Co of Canada Ltd relaxation |
Layer: jurisdictional, and every row is a recorded negative finding rather than a holding. The measured-mile row rests on a national secondary survey applied to BC, the remaining three record the absence of BC authority following a search.
The supportable statement on the measured mile is therefore narrow: it is the method Canadian commentary regards as most persuasive, and BC has no authority against it. Do not write that the measured mile is preferred in BC. One concession in the same national material is worth pressing, though: industry studies on the effects of overtime and overmanning are accepted where the contractor lacks specific project data . On a BC job with thin productivity records that is the difference between a pleadable disruption claim and none.
On proof, the defensible statement is that BC requires the fact of loss to be proved on the balance of probabilities but tolerates imprecision in quantification, expressly so in Evergreen Building Ltd v H Haebler Co Ltd, where the trial judge declined a day-by-day analysis and allocated two-thirds and one-third, and by the very existence of the total-cost gateway. Penvidic is the Supreme Court of Canada's classic authority for awarding damages on a rough, per-unit basis where precise proof is impracticable. The corpus records that use as unverified in any BC judgment, and the proposition BC commentary actually attaches to it is the narrower one that where a contract specifies a time for performance the contractor is entitled to have that time.
Owner-side losses, and the no-damage-for-delay overlay
BC recognises loss of opportunity as a head of delay damage and has repeatedly refused it to owners on causation and mitigation grounds in a falling market. That asymmetry is worth recording, because an owner counterclaiming lost profits for delay in BC is on weak ground.
| Case | Citation | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Houweling Nurseries Ltd v Fisons Western Corp | (1988), 37 BCLR (2d) 2 (BCCA) | Damages for the loss of an opportunity to transact business are recoverable in principle |
| Oak Point Properties Ltd v Leimay Properties Inc | (1986–87), 20 CLR 107 | Owner's loss-of-profits claim failed, could not prove market conditions would have supported a sale absent the delay |
| Falconer Construction Ltd v E Y Construction Ltd | 29 April 1992, Victoria Registry 90 393 (BCSC) | Owner's loss-of-profits claim failed on causation. The owner should have mitigated by pre-selling units before the market crash |
Layer: jurisdictional. All three rows rest on the secondary tier and on a single survey as to holding, and are marked . The Falconer entry is identified by registry number, not by a report or neutral citation.
Sitting over all of this is the no-damage-for-delay clause, and BC's position on it is old. No BC decision at any level construes a no-damage-for-delay clause after Tercon Contractors Ltd v British Columbia, 2010 SCC 4. Post-Tercon treatment in BC is prediction, not authority. What exists is a pre-Tercon, construction-based line, all : Hawl-Mac, where a clause barring "delay-related losses arising from whatever cause" did not defeat out-of-pocket expenses because it did not clearly prohibit the specific type of claim made, and Litchfield Bulldozing Ltd v PCL Construction Ltd, the pro-enforcement pole, holding that subcontractors are bound by such clauses incorporated from the head contract.
Two things follow for quantum. First, BC's public-policy vehicle is Tercon itself (a BC appeal) but no BC court has yet run the third stage of that framework against a no-damage-for-delay clause, so the content of the public-policy limb in the delay context is unknown. Second, BC's no-damage line and its prevention line are in tension and have never been reconciled: Hawl-Mac deploys both in one judgment, reading the clause down and treating the engineer's failure to extend as depriving the owner of the original completion date. No BC court has decided whether a sufficiently clear no-damage clause can survive an owner-prevention finding, which makes the interaction the second largest open question in BC delay law. That prevention argument is developed on the BC prevention and time at large page.
And note the contractual reality, which is easy to miss when reading the case law alone. Canada has no no-damage-for-delay statute anywhere. BC's principal public owner nonetheless achieves much of the same result by contract, at Major Works General Conditions GC 42.02 in the version dated 2026-04-01: the version, and the rest of the public-owner picture, is on the BC public works and infrastructure page.
Expert and schedule evidence. A clean gap, and what to do about it
State it flat, because it is a searched finding and it governs how a BC delay case is prepared. There is no BC judgment on delay-analysis methodology at all: not CPM, not as-planned versus as-built, not windows, not retrospective time impact analysis. There is no judicial comment on the SCL Protocol or on AACE in any BC judgment, and on the available survey none anywhere in Canada. And no BC judgment comments on the admissibility, weight or preferred methodology of delay-analysis expert evidence. Not one.
So a BC court applies White Burgess Langille Inman v Abbott and Haliburton Co, 2015 SCC 23 and Mohan, general Canadian expert-evidence law, with no BC methodological authority to apply. The corpus does not resolve a citation for Mohan and none is constructed here. The stated explanation for the Canadian silence is itself instructive: because many delay claims are resolved outside court or in confidential arbitration, it is uncertain which approaches are most persuasive. In BC that explanation has extra force, given how much of the province's delay work is arbitrated.
The nearest Canadian analogue is Ontario, and the fact that it was a BC firm writing about it is itself evidence of the gap. Walsh Construction Company of Canada v Toronto Transit Commission, 2024 ONSC 2782 found 1,047 compensable days of delay, held that expert evidence on delay causation is admissible when properly qualified and methodologically sound. And was persuaded by an analysis dividing the project into time windows and comparing contemporaneous against impacted schedules. It is also a warning about structure rather than method: Walsh claimed CAD 193 million across 23 heads and recovered nothing on subcontractor flow-through claims, because liquidating agreements had eliminated the general contractor's own liability.
Two practical instructions follow. Brief the windows approach as the persuasive Canadian benchmark, and build a fallback the judge can use if the granular analysis is rejected, because BC has its own precedent for refusing granular schedule analysis in favour of impressionistic apportionment in Evergreen Building, and a BC generalist judge with no construction list and no specialist construction bench has nothing in the local authorities pushing the other way. The neutral treatment of the methods themselves is on the delay analysis methods page.
Finally, the arbitration overlay, which catches out delay experts instructed for BC arbitrations. Arbitration Act, SBC 2020, c 2, s 35 imposes a statutory duty on party-appointed experts and makes certification mandatory in any report. So a delay report lacking it is non-compliant on its face. It is s 35, not s 34, s 34 is a tribunal-appointed-expert power carrying no duty. And note the evidentiary caveat that attaches to the whole Act in this corpus: the text was obtained from the Bill 7 (2020) third-reading text, not the consolidation, and should be re-checked against the consolidation before the section is relied on. The forum and expert machinery is developed on the BC arbitration, experts and forum page.
Authorities
- Golden Hill Ventures Ltd v Kemess Mines Inc 2002 BCSC 1460, [2002] BCTC 1460A BCSC trial judgment principally on tender disclosure and differing site conditions. The owner held obliged in a tender situation to disclose the best information it can provide regarding a project, with risk-allocation clauses ineffective to displace that duty, damages in excess of CAD 7 million. Its section on time for completion (paras 876–926) is cited in secondary literature for acceleration of parts of the work, the acceleration holding is unverified against the primary text.No BC judgment was read in original text for this corpus, the citation and holding rest on two or more independent secondary sources. The judge (Burnyeat J) and the date (17 October 2002) are verified. The correction rests on a digest classification rather than on the judgment, and the digest carries no acceleration topic. The acceleration characterisation traces to a single article by a non-Canadian firm which also misspells Stephenson and misattributes the constructive-acceleration elements. No citator list could be built, so whether the decision has been followed, distinguished or doubted since 2002 is unresolved. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- Morrison-Knudsen Co v British Columbia Hydro & Power Authority [1978] 4 WWR 193 (BCCA)Macdonald J defined acceleration as speeding up the work or increasing the rate of performance to overcome delay. Where the owner refuses an extension despite clear owner-caused delay the contractor remains bound to the original deadline, and if it must accelerate to meet that deadline the owner may be required to pay the extra cost.No BC judgment was read in original text for this corpus. The substance is confirmed by two independent secondary sources, the citation is UNVERIFIED and single-source. The DLR citation the corpus formerly carried as a candidate has no support from any source and must not be printed, a parallel DLR citation may exist but has not been located. Do not confuse this decision with Morrison-Knudsen International Co v Commonwealth of Australia, (1972) 46 ALJR 265 (HCA), the Sydney Opera House pre-contractual-representation case, or with the unrelated body of US Morrison-Knudsen litigation. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- W A Stephenson Construction (Western) Ltd v Metro Canada Ltd (1987), 27 CLR 113 (BCSC)The total cost method was accepted, on a strict three-part proof, that the bid price was reasonable, that the actual cost of completing construction was reasonable, and that the increase in cost was due to delay for which the owner was responsible. The decision also holds that meeting minutes documenting the contractor's concerns about delay and access constituted sufficient notice without formal written notice in the contractual period, and that the owner waived strict compliance by its conduct, its position being purely technical.No BC judgment was read in original text for this corpus, the citation is confirmed on three independent sources and the notice and waiver holdings on two, while the total-cost holding is marked unverified as to its terms. The corpus's conflict on level of court is resolved: an unreported BCCA decision of 20 March 1986 (Hutcheon JA, registry CA005467, CHL 6D-15905 and 6D-15905a) is a separate decision whose nature is unconfirmed, and it is obtainable from Courthouse Libraries BC on document request. The total-cost test belongs to the 1987 BCSC decision. The case is indexed as Stephenson by Courthouse Libraries BC and CLEBC and as Stevenson (W.A.) Construction (Western) Ltd in the CLR report, search both. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- Shore & Horwitz Construction Co Ltd v Franki of Canada Ltd [1964] SCR 589Supreme Court of Canada authority for recovering head-office overhead computed from actual cost, by two routes, average monthly overhead multiplied by the months of delay, and overhead expressed as a percentage of out-of-pocket expenses, assessed at 4.99% on the facts.The holding is confirmed by two independent secondary sources. The circulated formula, overhead and profit multiplied by days of delay and divided by contract duration, is a practitioner gloss and is not the Supreme Court's holding, presenting it as such is a citation risk. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- Eichleay Corp ASBCA No 5183, 60-2 BCA ¶2688The United States board decision giving its name to the three-step allocation of unabsorbed home-office overhead, recovery being limited to overhead the contractor could not absorb through other work.A United States armed services board decision, referred to in Canadian commentary. The citation is universally repeated but was not independently verified for this corpus. No BC judgment adopting Eichleay by name was located, and no Canadian judgment applies the formula.Find on ASBCA →
- Hawl-Mac Construction Ltd v Campbell River (District) (1985), 10 CLR 177, 1985 CanLII 342 (BCSC)The contractor recovered out-of-pocket expenses notwithstanding a no-damage-for-delay clause. A no-damage clause will not be enforced if it does not clearly prohibit the specific type of claim made, and the judgment links that outcome to the engineer's breach of a seven-day duty to decide an extension, which meant the owner could not rely on the original completion date.No BC judgment was read in original text for this corpus. The citation is verified twice, the propositions rest on secondary sources and are marked unverified. The measure of recovery matters for quantum: it is an actual-cost, out-of-pocket measure, not a formulaic time-related-cost rate. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- Evergreen Building Ltd v H Haebler Co Ltd (1983), 5 CLR 70 (BCSC)Rough-justice apportionment. The trial judge declined to conduct a day-by-day analysis and allocated responsibility two-thirds / one-third.No BC judgment was read in original text for this corpus. The citation is confirmed, the holding rests on a single survey and is marked unverified. It is cited here for what it shows about proof rather than about apportionment it is BC's own precedent for refusing a granular schedule analysis. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- Litchfield Bulldozing Ltd v PCL Construction Ltd (1985), 14 CLR 287 (BCCA)Subcontractors are bound by no-damage-for-delay clauses incorporated from the head contract, the pro-enforcement pole of the BC line, and the appellate one.No BC judgment was read in original text for this corpus, the holding rests on a single survey and is marked unverified. The corpus is not internally consistent on the level of court. The BC material reports BCCA and one Canada-level list reports BCSC. So the appellate status should be confirmed before the case is leaned on. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- Tercon Contractors Ltd v British Columbia 2010 SCC 4The Supreme Court of Canada framework for exclusion clauses, arising from a British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Highways tender.A Supreme Court of Canada decision doing national work, it is developed on the Canada pages and is used here only as the vehicle BC would apply to a no-damage-for-delay clause. No BC judgment was read in original text for this corpus. No BC court has run the third stage of the framework against such a clause, so the content of BC's public-policy limb in the delay context is unknown. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- Houweling Nurseries Ltd v Fisons Western Corp (1988), 37 BCLR (2d) 2 (BCCA)Damages for the loss of an opportunity to transact business are recoverable in principle.No BC judgment was read in original text for this corpus, the holding rests on a single survey and is marked unverified. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- Oak Point Properties Ltd v Leimay Properties Inc (1986–87), 20 CLR 107An owner's loss-of-profits claim failed because it could not prove that market conditions would have supported a sale absent the delay.No BC judgment was read in original text for this corpus, the holding rests on a single survey and is marked unverified. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- Falconer Construction Ltd v E Y Construction Ltd 29 April 1992, Victoria Registry 90 393 (BCSC)An owner's loss-of-profits claim failed on causation, the owner should have mitigated by pre-selling units before the market crash.No BC judgment was read in original text for this corpus, the holding rests on a single survey and is marked unverified, and the decision is identified by registry number rather than by a report or neutral citation. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- Penvidic Contracting Co v International Nickel Co of Canada Ltd [1976] 1 SCR 267Cited for the proposition that where a contract specifies a time for performance the contractor is entitled to have that time.A Supreme Court of Canada decision. The proposition rests on secondary commentary and is marked unverified. The case is also the classic Canadian authority for awarding damages on a rough, per-unit basis where precise proof is impracticable, but that use was not verified in any BC judgment, and no BC judgment applying the relaxation was located. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- Walsh Construction Company of Canada v Toronto Transit Commission 2024 ONSC 2782An Ontario decision finding 1,047 compensable days of delay on expert delay impact analysis. Expert evidence on delay causation is admissible when properly qualified and methodologically sound. The method that persuaded divided the project into time windows and compared contemporaneous against impacted schedules. The contractor claimed CAD 193 million across 23 heads and recovered nothing on subcontractor flow-through claims because liquidating agreements had eliminated its own liability.An Ontario judgment, persuasive only in British Columbia. It was not read in original text and the propositions rest on secondary sources, they are marked unverified. It is included because BC has no equivalent authority of its own. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- White Burgess Langille Inman v Abbott and Haliburton Co 2015 SCC 23The Supreme Court of Canada framework for the admissibility of expert evidence, including the expert's duty of independence and impartiality, the law a BC court applies to a delay expert.A Supreme Court of Canada decision, not read in original text for this corpus, the application to delay evidence rests on secondary commentary. The corpus records the companion authority as R v Mohan but resolves no citation for it, and none should be constructed. Verify on CanLII before pleading.Find on CanLII →
- Arbitration Act, SBC 2020, c 2 s 35Section 35, headed "Duty of expert", imposes a statutory duty on party-appointed experts and makes certification mandatory in any report. A delay report lacking the certification is non-compliant on its face.The Act's text was obtained from the Bill 7 (2020) third-reading text rather than from the consolidation, and should be re-checked against the consolidation before the section is relied on. The provision is s 35, not s 34, s 34 is a tribunal-appointed-expert power carrying no duty. Whether government arbitration agreements are prescribed out of the Act by the Arbitration Regulation is unresolved, because the regulation was not obtainable.Find on CanLII →
- Builders Lien Act, RSBC 1997, c 45 ss 8, 20Section 20 sets the 45-day period for filing a claim of lien and s 8 the holdback period, which is 55 days now and becomes 46 days when the Construction Prompt Payment Act is proclaimed.The statutory text was obtained from BC Laws, the section numbers are primary-verified. The application of the provisions to a delay claim rests on secondary commentary. Do not print 46 days for lien filing, 46 is the future holdback period, not the filing period.Find on CanLII →
- Construction Prompt Payment Act (Bill 20, 2025) s 16The adjudicable heads at s 16 determine whether payment is required and expressly cover approved and proposed change orders, which is wider than the Ontario equivalent.Royal Assent 27 November 2025. Not in force as at 10 August 2026, with no adjudication authority designated and the regulation consultation closed 7 July 2026. That status is confirmed by two independent secondary sources. BC Laws blocks the Bills path and the Act is not in the consolidated statutes, so the section numbers of the amendments it makes to the Builders Lien Act were not obtainable and must not be guessed. Whether a BC adjudicator could grant time is unresolved.Find on CanLII →
- British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, Major Works General Conditions, version 2026-04-01 GC 42.02The province's principal public owner achieves much of the effect of a no-damage-for-delay regime by contract, notwithstanding that Canada has no no-damage-for-delay statute.The General Conditions were obtained as a primary document, so the version and clause number are stated with confidence. The dispute ladder at GC 58.00–61.00 was truncated on retrieval and its internal time limits were not extracted, so any live matter requires the ladder to be read clause by clause.
About this material Library content is general information about construction claim practice, not legal advice. Entitlement, deadlines and procedure are governed by your own contract and by the law of the place the work is performed. Reviewed August 10, 2026 · Report a correction
In this article
- What a BC contractor recovers for delay, and how it must prove it
- The correction: Golden Hill Ventures is probably not an acceleration authority
- Acceleration in BC, the Morrison-Knudsen line, and elements you cannot plead
- Head-office overhead, BC is a Shore & Horwitz jurisdiction, not an Eichleay one
- Total cost, the BC gateway, and a citation conflict now resolved
- The heads with no BC authority: productivity, standby, and the standard of proof
- Owner-side losses, and the no-damage-for-delay overlay
- Expert and schedule evidence. A clean gap, and what to do about it