Construction Delay and Disruption Claims: Attacking the Schedule Data and Winning Concurrency and Damages

C. Andrew Gibson, Partner | Stoel Rives LLP

C. Andrew Gibson is a partner in Stoel Rives LLP’s Real Estate, Construction, and Design Practice and co-chair of the firm’s Construction & Design Section, practicing from the Portland, Oregon office. A construction business litigator, he has litigated delay, defect, insurance and bond, bid protest, mechanic’s lien, real estate, and collection claims through mediation, arbitration, and trial. His delay-claim work includes serving as lead outside counsel to the general contractor on defect and delay claims arising from a design-build, 77,000-square-foot high-bay Air Force hangar in Arizona, litigating construction defect and delay claims for the owner of an Oregon city wastewater treatment plant, and negotiating the resolution of contract disputes and delay claims for the EPC contractor on a large Southern California battery energy storage project. He also drafts and negotiates project documents from design through construction and advises clients on contracting and insurance coverage. He is admitted in Oregon, California, and Washington, and before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Gibson earned his J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law in 2005, with a High Technology Law Certificate, and holds B.A. degrees in History and in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, 2000. He is admitted to practice in Oregon, California, and Washington.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Gibson co-chairs Stoel Rives’ Construction & Design Section. He has been recognized in Chambers USA for Construction since 2025 and in The Best Lawyers in America for Construction Law and Litigation – Construction since 2022.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Gibson writes regularly on construction contracting and claims for the Daily Journal of Commerce, Portland Business Journal, and other publications. His recent articles include “Can a Contractor Simply Walk Off a Job?” (2022), “No Construction Contract is Standard — Terms Matter” (2025), and “2026 Best Practices for Construction Project Insurance” (2026). He also regularly presents at construction law seminars such as the Oregon State Bar Advanced Construction Law and The Seminar Group’s Construction Litigation program.

• Experience

Mr. Gibson’s claims work spans delay, differing site conditions, change orders, and defects on public and private projects. On infrastructure work, he recovered on multimillion-dollar differing site conditions and disputed change order claims for a heavy civil contractor on an under-river sewer siphon public works project, defended an international general contractor against complex subcontractor extra-work claims
and Miller Act lawsuits on federal infrastructure projects, assisted a heavy highway contractor with claim preparation on state highway projects under state claims procedures, and won a federal bid protest for a general contractor on a $33.5 million federal construction project. He represented a general contractor in a large commercial shopping center dispute involving unpaid change orders, defect claims, and delay claims, resolved multiple defect and delay claims on a Moab, Utah resort hotel through ADR, and obtained a California Court of Appeal affirmance of judgments on dispositive motions against a subcontractor’s claims for additional compensation on behalf of a community college district and its general contractor. In the energy sector, he recovered on multimillion-dollar defect claims for a data center owner, litigated defect and design error claims for the owner of a large Idaho wind project, served as lead outside counsel on a university-led open ocean wave energy testing project, and has drafted and negotiated EPC contracts for solar, wind, wave, hydropower, and natural gas projects nationwide.

Mario R. Nicholas, Partner | Stoel Rives LL
Mario R. Nicholas is a partner in Stoel Rives LLP’s Construction and Design group in Portland, Oregon, where he litigates construction disputes and drafts construction agreements for a range of clients and projects throughout the country. His claims work includes delay, liquidated damages, change order, productivity, and total cost disputes. He represented a subcontractor on delay/impact and total cost (abandonment) claims in a dispute exceeding $30 million, represented an owner in change order and productivity claims exceeding $10 million, and, as part of a two-attorney team, won an AAA arbitration for a general contractor after a one-week hearing against a subcontractor’s change order, delay, and total cost claims. He has trial and arbitration experience and has represented clients before federal and state courts, domestic and international arbitration panels, and administrative bodies.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Nicholas earned his J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law (2010), and his B.A. in Economics, with a minor in History, from Boston College (2006). He is admitted to practice in Oregon, California, and Washington.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Nicholas was named Best Lawyers “Lawyer of the Year” for Construction Law in Portland for 2027. He is recognized in The Best Lawyers in America for Construction Law (2026–present) and in Chambers USA, “America’s Leading Lawyers for Business,” for Construction in Oregon (2025–present), and was previously listed in Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch for Construction Law (2022–2025) and Oregon Super Lawyers Rising Stars for Construction Litigation (2017–2020).

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Nicholas’s recent writing on project delay and related construction issues includes “Don’t Be Late! (But Assume That Your Project May Be)” (Daily Journal of Commerce, 2021), “When to Prepare for Project
Disputes? Always.” (Daily Journal of Commerce, 2020), “What to Consider When Analyzing Dispute Resolution Provisions” (Daily Journal of Commerce, 2024), and “Inflation: The Elephant in a Construction Dispute or Contract Negotiation” (Daily Journal of Commerce, 2022). He co-authored “Arbitrating the Complex Surety Case” (ABA Book Publishing, 2018), presented “Expert Witnesses” to the Oregon Claims Adjusters Association (2017) and “Managing the Risk in CMAR Contracts: Guidance for Owners, Contractors and Subs” for Strafford (2019), and has spoken at the Annual Oregon Construction Law Seminar in 2019, 2024, and 2025.

• Experience

Mr. Nicholas’s delay and claims matters include representing a subcontractor on delay/impact claims in a dispute exceeding $ 30 million, representing an owner in charge order and productivity claims exceeding $10 million, defending a prime contractor on a commercial facility against a subcontractor’s delay and change order claims, representing the owner of a new apartment project in a dispute with its general contractor over liquidated damages, defective work, delay, and change order claims, and representing a luxury condominium owner in a multimillion-dollar dispute over defective work, liquidated damages, and multiple subcontractor liens. On the transactional side, he has drafted and negotiated construction contracts for owners, architects, developers, and contractors, and an EPC agreement for renewable energy clients.

SESSION 1 – Reading Native P6 Schedule Files for Manipulation and Choosing the Forensic Delay Method | Mario R. Nicholas & C. Andrew Gibson | 12:00pm – 1:00pm

This hour starts when the PDF bar chart stops. It covers the native XER request that reaches scrubbed exports, audit data and scheduling-option settings. It then covers the update-to-update comparisons that expose re-tied logic, imposed constraints, progress-override flips and float suppression, and the method choice that boards and courts accept when contemporaneous updates exist. Attendees leave able to serve a native-file request that anticipates the “not available” and confidentiality objections, read a manipulation red-flag sheet keyed to specific XER tables, and build or attack the source-validation record that decides a Rule 702(b) “sufficient facts or data” fight.

BREAK | 1:00pm – 1:10pm

SESSION 2 – Apportioning Concurrent Delay and Proving Disruption Damages Past Notice and No-Damages Clauses | Mario R. Nicholas & C. Andrew Gibson | 1:10pm – 2:10pm

This hour turns forensic schedule findings into recoverable time and money, or into the defense that denies them. It starts with the 2025 board decisions where concurrency netting reduced large delay totals, including Yul Lim, where 661 credited days became 127 compensable, and Alares. It then covers limitations and notice bars, the New York and Texas no-damages-for-delay poles, measured-mile baselines, and extended general conditions and home-office overhead proved window by window. Owner, GC and subcontractor counsel leave able to spot a netting-and-release trap before a client signs, argue separability or concurrency in either direction, map native-file evidence to the defined terms of an NDFD exception, and cross an opposing scheduler, using a concurrency netting matrix, an NDFD-exception proof checklist and a cross outline.