The Claim-Within-a-Claim Trap in US Notice Machinery

The §15.1.3.1/.2 split: new in 2017, and it changes which regime applies

AIA A201–2017 does not have one 21-day rule. It has two, and which one applies depends on timing that has nothing to do with the delay event itself.

§15.1.3.1 governs Claims arising before or during the §12.2.2 one-year correction period: 21 days from occurrence or from when the claimant first recognizes the condition, whichever is later, with notice to the other party and the Initial Decision Maker. Miss it and the Claim is contractually time-barred. §15.1.3.2 governs conditions first arising after the correction period expires: no 21-day contractual limit, no IDM referral, notice to the other party only.

The split is real and it is new to the 2017 edition. It matters because it is not a single deadline with a single failure mode. It is a fork. A party assessing whether a given delay claim is even subject to the 21-day bar first has to work out which side of the correction-period line the claim falls on, and get that threshold question right before the deadline question is even reachable.

The Article 8 / Article 15 collision: is a time request a Claim?

§15.1.1 defines a Claim to expressly include "a change in the Contract Time," which reads as though it settles the question. It does not settle the practical one. §8.3.1 lets the Architect determine whether an unenumerated cause justifies delay, and 2017 removed the requirement that a time extension be effected by Change Order. The extension is now a unilateral Architect determination. That leaves genuine ambiguity about whether a contractor's request for time under §8.3.1 is itself a Claim that must be routed through the §1.6.1/§15.1.3 formal notice machinery, or whether it can proceed as an informal request to the Architect outside Article 15 entirely.

The safe course is to treat every time request as a Claim and serve it accordingly, because if it turns out to have been one, and it wasn't served as one, the request is gone.

The owner/contractor asymmetry the form doesn't draft out

Article 15's notice machinery does not run in both directions. Under A201–2017 the owner is not required to file a formal Claim to assess liquidated damages for delay. That assessment sits outside §15.1.3 altogether. The contractor's own time claim, by contrast, is barred at 21 days if it isn't initiated and served correctly. The same Article 15 apparatus that can extinguish a contractor's meritorious time claim for a service defect imposes no equivalent procedural discipline on the owner's LD assessment. A contractor evaluating its own notice exposure should not assume the owner faces a mirror-image deadline. It doesn't.

§1.6.2: the certified-mail rule is strict, not a formality

Ordinary notices under §1.6.1 may be given electronically to a designated representative. Notice of a Claim is different: §1.6.2 deems a Claim notice duly served only if delivered by certified or registered mail, or by courier providing proof of delivery. An email that would satisfy every other notice clause in the contract does not serve a Claim under §1.6.2, not even where the owner had actual knowledge of the claim's substance. This is one of the easiest own goals in US construction practice: a contractor with a good claim, timely raised in substance, can still lose it on service alone. There is no reading of §1.6.2 in the source material that softens this into a curable formality. Treat it as an absolute procedural requirement every time a Claim is served.

FAR's notice-vs-cost-cutoff distinction

Federal practice draws a line that AIA practice does not: some FAR notice periods are entitlement bars, and some are only cost cut-offs, and confusing the two produces the wrong risk assessment.

FAR 52.249-10(b)(1) requires 10 days' written notice of the causes of delay to the Contracting Officer, extendable by the CO, and paragraph (b)(2) has the CO ascertain the facts and extend the time accordingly, with findings that are final and conclusive subject to appeal under the Disputes clause. This is an entitlement step with a built-in escape valve.

FAR 52.242-14 and 52.243-4 operate differently. Their 20-day provisions do not bar the claim. They bar recovery of costs incurred more than 20 days before the written notice. A contractor who notices late under these clauses still has a claim. It has simply forfeited the earliest slice of its cost recovery, with the cut-off running backwards from whenever notice actually lands. That is a materially different failure mode from AIA's 21-day bar, and the two should not be described with the same vocabulary. Both regimes carry a genuine hard stop, though: 52.243-4(f) and 52.242-14(c) bar any proposal or claim after final payment, with no CO discretion to revive it.

What Amatea/Grimberg takes away

None of the mechanics above are only about getting the paperwork right. Hitting every notice deadline still leaves the merits to prove. Amatea/Grimberg JV v Secretary of the Navy, No. 2024-1006 (Fed. Cir., 25 June 2025), holds that a Contracting Officer's grant of a time extension and release of liquidated damages does not establish excusable delay for the contractor's own affirmative claim. The court's language is unequivocal: CO findings of fact "are not binding upon the parties and are not entitled to any deference" once suit is brought. An administrative extension is not evidence of causation, and a contractor cannot bootstrap the CO's own relief from LDs into proof that its own delay was excusable. That argument does not work, and this is the case that closes the door on it.

The other US forms, and why EJCDC is the trap

AIA and FAR are not the only notice regimes in play, and the differences are not cosmetic:

EJCDC's 30-day window looks like the most generous on paper. It is the opposite in practice: because the clock runs from commencement rather than recognition, a delay that develops gradually, the kind that is hardest to spot early, can already be time-barred by the time anyone would reasonably have identified it as a claim. A contractor working under an EJCDC form should treat every potential delay as notice-worthy from the moment it starts, not from the moment its significance becomes clear.

The absolute bars: after final payment, nothing survives

Three FAR clauses each bar relief after final payment, independently of every other deadline discussed above, and together they are the quiet killers of otherwise good delay claims: 52.243-4(f) bars any proposal after final payment. 52.242-14(c) requires the claim to be asserted not later than final payment, and 52.236-2(d) runs the same backstop for differing site conditions. A delay claim not asserted before final payment is dead regardless of the six-year CDA limitation period. The practical rule is to identify the projected final-payment date at the start of a claim, not to discover it at the end.

Sobre este material El contenido de la biblioteca es información general sobre la práctica de las reclamaciones de construcción, no asesoramiento jurídico. El derecho a reclamar, los plazos y el procedimiento se rigen por su propio contrato y por el derecho del lugar donde se ejecuta la obra. Revisado el 1 de septiembre de 2026 · Informar de una corrección