How to write an EOT claim, step by step

Those are the four elements every extension of time claim has to establish. This page is the working method: where a step turns on a legal point, it gives one sentence and a link to the law.

Two things to hold on to. The claim document is the last step, not the first: notice and records are decided while the delay is happening, and drafting afterwards cannot repair them. And time and money are separate claims: an extension moves the completion date and relieves you of delay damages, but it does not pay for the extra weeks.

The four-element frame is this library's synthesis of what the standard forms have in common, not a scheme any one form sets out.

Step 1. Read the contract before you write anything

Read the executed contract, not the printed form you remember. Bespoke amendment to extension of time, notice and concurrency provisions is normal on major projects, and an amended clause is the one that decides your claim. Pull out and keep on one page:

• The extension of time clause. What it calls the relief, who assesses it, and the test it applies.
• The list of qualifying events. Does your event appear on it? Is there a general sweep-up for causes beyond your control, or is the list closed? The hub's event grid shows that FIDIC 2017 and JCT have no general sweep-up, while AIA A201–2017, FAR and CCDC 2 – 2020 do.
• Whether the event gives time only, or time and money. Weather and strikes usually give time only. Variations usually give both. Employer delay usually does, but not always: under FIDIC 2017 Sub-Clause 8.5 ground (e) it is time only on the standard form.
• Every notice clause that touches the event. There may be more than one: a time notice and a separate money notice, each with its own clock.
• Who receives notices, and how. The named Engineer, Superintendent, Consultant or Architect, by the method the notices clause specifies.
• The programme clause and definitions. Whether a delay analysis method is mandated, what the accepted programme is, and whether days are calendar or Working Days.

Use the contract's own vocabulary: Relevant Event under JCT, compensation event under NEC4 (which has no extension of time clause at all), Superintendent under AS 4000, Consultant under CCDC. The wrong words tell the reader nobody read the contract.

Then answer the question the other side will ask first: was this event at your risk? A delay caused by your own subcontractor, your own late procurement or your own resourcing is not a qualifying event, however well you document it. If your own delays overlap the event, you will deal with them in step 5, but you need to know about them now.

Step 2. Serve notice on time, and separately from everything else

Notice is the cheapest element to get right and the one on which sound claims are most often lost. In Panther Real Estate Development LLC v Modern Executive Systems Contracting LLC [2022] DIFC CA 016 (FIDIC 1999, Sub-Clause 20.1), the contractor lost its extension of time on notice grounds although the employer had caused 306 of the 325 days of delay.

The first question is when your clock started. Most forms run from awareness, one runs from the event itself:

Form-default positions from the notice and time bars comparison. The executed contract governs.

Local detail: AS 4000's two-stage delay notice and written claim under cl 34 are on notice and time bars in Australia; CCDC and Canadian law on Canada's page; AIA and FAR on the United States page.

The notice itself can be short. Panther held that the notice "can be short and to the point": it is enough that it identifies the event, says you consider yourself entitled to an extension or payment, arrives in time and reaches the Engineer. Four working rules:

1. Send it as a notice, under the clause. A monthly report, a progress-meeting minute or a programme narrative is not notice.
2. Do not wait for the money. The time notice goes when the clock says, not when the commercial position is settled.
3. Serve the money notice too, if the contract has one. Under CCDC 2 – 2020, GC 6.6.1 requires its own timely notice of intent to claim a price increase, separate from the GC 6.5.4 delay notice. One delay can need two notices.
4. Name every basis you might rely on later. A notice tied to one clause may not carry a claim later run under another.

The delay notice templates give you letters for AS 4000, FIDIC 2017 and CCDC 2, with the clause each one serves and the send-by rule.

Step 3. Gather the contemporaneous records

The claim can only prove what the records show, and the records were written while the work was going on. Collect them event by event, while the people who made them are still on the project:

• The accepted baseline programme and every accepted revision, as native schedule files, not PDFs.
• The schedule update series, statused with actual start and finish dates, with a narrative for every logic change.
• The instruction or event itself: the change, the late drawing, the RFI and its response, the access denial, dated on both sides.
• Correspondence in date order, including your notices and the replies.
• Daily reports and manpower returns across the impact window. They usually show when the impact actually began.
• Dated photographs tied to location, meeting minutes, and weather data against a long-run baseline if weather is the cause.
• Cost records by period, if you will claim money, so the cost can be tied to the weeks the delay was felt.

FIDIC 2017 gives contemporary records their own place in the claims procedure (Sub-Clause 20.2.3). Where the contract is silent, the tribunal applies the same discipline. In Alares Construction, Inc. v Department of Veterans Affairs, CBCA 6149, 7071, 7597 (21 March 2025), the contractor blamed the owner for all 765 days of delay; the Board found the owner responsible for 218, and rejected a mid-project logic revision in the contractor's own schedule update, which took its late slab off the critical path, as making "no sense".

The item-by-item version is the EOT claim readiness checklist. Why the records decide which analysis you can run is set out in records and evidence.

Where Storia fits

Steps 2 and 3 fail for the same reason: the date the delay began, and the records that prove what happened, are scattered across drawings, RFIs, schedules, correspondence and field reports. Storia turns those into one source-linked project record, where every answer traces back to the document it came from. Because it builds the project narrative as the work happens, a team can see when a delay commenced while the notice window is still open, and move from records to a claim-ready case in days.

Step 4. Show the delay hit the critical path

Across the decisions gathered in this library, this is where claims most often fail. Delay to progress is not delay to completion. An event that held up an activity with float to spare did not move the completion date, and it earns no extension, however well it is documented. The United States statement is George Sollitt Construction Co. v United States, 64 Fed. Cl. 229 (2005): delay affecting only non-critical activities does not delay completion.

So the causation section is a before-and-after comparison: the critical path when the event hit, and the critical path with the event's effect added, isolated to that event. Not a narrative of everything that went wrong, and not actual completion minus planned completion.

Which method you use is not a free choice.

• The contract may mandate one. NEC4 ECC clause 63.5 assesses the delay prospectively against the Accepted Programme, and many EPC contracts name time impact analysis. A mandated method governs.
• Otherwise, your records choose it. Statused native updates support windows analysis and time impact analysis. A baseline and an as-built alone support much less. Delay analysis methods compared maps records to methods and sets out what tribunals punish.
• Do it while the delay is live where you can. The SCL Delay and Disruption Protocol, 2nd Edition (February 2017), Core Principle 4 asks the parties not to "wait and see" but to deal with the time impact of employer risk events as the work proceeds.

A simple analysis on clean records beats a sophisticated one on reconstructed schedules. (Opinion.) For a large or disputed claim, bring in a delay analyst early, while the records can still be improved.

Step 5. Deal with float and concurrency before the other side does

Float. Unless the contract says otherwise, the SCL Protocol's default (Core Principle 8) is that an extension is granted only to the extent the employer delay is predicted to reduce the total float on the affected path below zero. An event that eats float but leaves completion untouched gives no time. Check the contract: NEC4 ECC protects the contractor's terminal float, and some bespoke contracts give float to the employer outright. Show the float at the date of the event, from the update current at that date.

Concurrency. If your own delay was critical over the same period, say so, and say what it does to the claim. The answer depends on the governing law and the contract: on one four-week fact pattern, the library's comparison runs from four weeks of time to none, and the most common result where genuine concurrency is found is time without money. Read concurrent delay and name the approach your jurisdiction applies. Silence about your own delays reads as concealment.

Step 6. Quantify the time, then the money separately

The time. State the days of delay to completion and the new completion date. The extension is assessed net: the delay caused is added to the previously fixed completion date, not measured from the date of the instruction. That is Balfour Beatty Building Ltd v Chestermount Properties Ltd (1993) 62 BLR 1. If you were already three weeks late and a variation causes four weeks of critical delay, you claim four weeks, and the three remain yours. Use the contract's day count (calendar or working) and show the arithmetic.

The money, if you claim it, is a second claim inside the same document:

• Its own entitlement. An extension does not automatically carry compensation (SCL Protocol Core Principle 12). Identify the clause that pays.
• Its own notice, where the contract has one (step 2).
• The right weeks. Prolongation is priced for the period when the effect was felt, not for the extra weeks at the end of the job (SCL Protocol Core Principle 22).
• No double counting between prolongation, the variation's own valuation and any disruption claim.
• Concurrent costs separated. Where your delay overlapped, Core Principle 14 allows recovery only if you can separate the costs the employer delay caused from those your own delay caused.

The heads, the periods and the traps are on prolongation and delay costs. If you are not claiming money now, reserve it in terms.

Step 7. Structure the claim document

A claim document is an argument an assessor can check line by line against the records. Write it event by event, each with its own causal chain. Adapt the outline below to your contract's vocabulary and any content it prescribes.

[PROJECT] - Extension of time claim no. [X]: [EVENT, SHORT NAME]
Contract:   [CONTRACT NO.], [FORM AND EDITION] as amended by [REF]
To:         [NAMED RECIPIENT, ROLE UNDER THE CONTRACT]
Under:      Clause [EOT CLAUSE] (time) and clause [MONEY CLAUSE] (cost)
Date:       [DATE]

1. Executive summary
   1.1 The event, the clause relied on, the days claimed
   1.2 The revised completion date sought
   1.3 Cost claimed, and under which clause (or expressly reserved)

2. Contractual basis
   2.1 Why the event qualifies: clause, list item, definitions
   2.2 Why it is not at the contractor's risk
   2.3 Notices given: date, reference, recipient, clause, method

3. Chronology
   3.1 Date-ordered facts, each tied to a record reference
   3.2 When the event occurred, when the delay commenced,
       when its effect ended (or that it is continuing)

4. Causation and critical path
   4.1 The programme used: revision, data date, acceptance
   4.2 The method, and why the records support it
   4.3 Critical path before and after the event
   4.4 Float at the date of the event
   4.5 Contractor delays in the same period, and their effect
   4.6 Mitigation taken

5. Time claimed
   5.1 Days of delay to completion, with the calculation
   5.2 Revised completion date (added to the previously fixed date)

6. Cost claimed (if any)
   6.1 Entitlement clause and money notice
   6.2 The period in which the effect was felt
   6.3 Heads and amounts, with how double recovery is excluded

7. Reservation of rights

8. Records index
   A  Notices and correspondence
   B  Programme files (native) and extracts
   C  Instructions, RFIs, drawings (with revisions)
   D  Daily reports, manpower, photographs
   E  Cost records by period

Where each section usually goes wrong:

Some forms prescribe the content and the deadline. Under FIDIC 2017, as published commentary summarises it, the fully detailed Claim under Sub-Clause 20.2.4 is due within 84 days of awareness and must include a statement of the contractual and/or legal basis; if that statement is late, the Notice of Claim lapses. Under AS 4000, cl 34 requires the written claim to evidence the facts of causation and the extent of the delay, as secondary summaries give it and the Australian notice page sets out. Match your headings to what your contract asks for.

Individuate; do not aggregate. A claim that bundles many events and claims the whole overrun without linking each cause to its effect is a global or total time claim, and it is the weakest form of extension of time claim there is. The SCL Protocol (Core Principle 17) discourages it. Walter Lilly & Co Ltd v Mackay [2012] EWHC 1773 (TCC) held that a global claim for loss is not barred as a matter of law, but it still has to be proved; the same logic is applied to time. (Inference.) Plead event by event wherever the records allow, and use a global claim only as an express fallback (records and evidence).

Step 8. Submit, track the response, and keep your rights alive

Submit under the clause, to the named person, by the stated method, and keep proof of delivery. Then:

• Diarise the other side's deadlines. Some forms give you a deemed outcome if the assessor is silent. FIDIC 2017 Sub-Clause 20.2.2 deems a Notice of Claim valid if the Engineer does not object within 14 days, and NEC4 ECC cl 61.4 treats a notification as accepted after the Project Manager's silence. Others, such as JCT 2024, give no deemed grant at all. Know which you have.
• Update a continuing claim. If the delay is still running, claim the predictable effect now and update it as the impact unfolds. That is the approach of SCL Protocol Core Principle 7, and FIDIC 2017 has its own interim claim procedure for events with a continuing effect (Sub-Clause 20.2.6).
• Do not sign away the claim. Change orders, variation valuations and payment certificates can carry release or full-and-final wording. Reserve your time and delay-cost rights in terms before you sign anything that settles the same event. See change order releases and reservation of rights.

If the claim is rejected or ignored, follow the contract's dispute ladder in order: determination, negotiation, then whatever comes next (dispute board, expert determination, adjudication, arbitration or the courts). Some jurisdictions add a statutory route, such as security of payment adjudication in Australia or prompt payment adjudication in Ontario, which in Ontario reaches extension of time only as a supporting matter to a payment dispute. Check the time limits for escalating a rejected claim, and the limitation period, before the correspondence drifts. At this stage, take advice.

Common reasons EOT claims fail

Across the decisions gathered in this library, claims fail in a consistent pattern. (Inference from a collected set of decisions, not a statistical sample.)

Most EOT claims are won or lost before anyone writes them. The document only reports what the notice and the records already decided.

Frequently asked questions

How long do I have to submit an EOT claim?

As long as your contract says, and often less than you think. There are usually two deadlines: a short one for the notice and a longer one for the detailed claim. Under FIDIC 2017, commentary reports 28 days from awareness for the Notice of Claim and 84 days for the fully detailed Claim. Under CCDC 2 – 2020, notice is due within 10 Working Days after the delay commences. Check your executed contract and its amendments.

What is the difference between an EOT notice and an EOT claim?

The notice puts the event on the record in time: what happened, when, the clause, and that you claim an extension. The claim proves it: contractual basis, chronology, critical path analysis, days and records. The notice is short and early; the claim is detailed and follows. A missed notice can defeat a strong claim.

Does an extension of time mean I get paid for the delay?

No, not by itself. An extension moves the completion date and relieves you of delay damages. Payment for the extra time depends on a separate entitlement under the contract, often with its own notice, and some events (weather, strikes, epidemics on most forms) give time only. Claim the money separately, priced on the weeks the delay was actually felt.

Can I claim an EOT if we were also late?

Often yes, but the answer depends on the governing law and the contract. Where an employer delay and your own delay were both critical over the same period, some regimes give the full extension, some apportion, and some give nothing, and a clearly drafted contract clause can decide it. The usual result is time without money. Address your own delays in the claim rather than leaving them to the other side.

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 October 6, 2026 · Report a correction