The gear room was supposed to be released Monday. It gets released Thursday, and nobody announces it, because on a commercial job late is just Tuesday.
Four months later the PM adds up the labor and the job is nowhere near the estimate. Now you have a delay claim — and the construction delay labor claim documentation an electrical contractor actually needs is not something you can go make.
It either exists in what your foreman wrote down on those days, or it doesn't.
That is the whole problem in one sentence. Delay claims are decided by records created before anybody knew there would be an argument.
This post is that record: what to write on a delayed day, when the notice clock starts, how to price idle and disrupted hours, and how to assemble the file. All of it works with a clipboard and a phone.
What Counts as Delay Claim Documentation on an Electrical Job
Delay claim documentation is a dated, contemporaneous record that answers four questions for every impacted day: which activity was blocked, from when to when, which crew stood by, and what they did instead.
Everything else — photos, RFIs, schedules, emails — corroborates that record. None of it replaces it.
A timesheet line that reads 8.5 hrs — standby is not documentation. It's a number with no story attached, and the other side will read it as padding.
A line that reads Wed 7:00a–3:30p, crew of 3 — staged for second-floor east branch circuits, area not available, drywall still hanging is testimony with a timestamp. Same mechanism that ends a T&M invoice dispute: the field note IS the explanation.
Here is what each piece of paper actually proves, and who makes it.
| Record | What it proves | Who creates it | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily labor record (per worker, per day, with a work-performed note) | Who was on site, for how long, on what scope, and what stopped them | Foreman or the worker at clock-out | Same day. Not Friday. |
| Daily field report | Site conditions, crew count, the delay event, who was told | Foreman | Before anyone leaves |
| Written notice to the GC | You raised it inside the contract window | Office or PM | Within the days your subcontract specifies |
| Photos with date stamps | The area really was not ready | Anyone with a phone | The morning you found it |
| Emails and RFI responses | The date you asked and the date you got an answer | PM | As it happens |
| Change order log | Which extra work was requested, by whom, and when | PM or foreman | The day it is asked for |
The word doing the work in that table is contemporaneous — created the day it happened. A log typed up in one sitting after the dispute started carries far less weight, and an obviously after-the-fact log invites the argument that you built it for the claim.
You cannot manufacture it later. That is not a scare tactic, it is just how the evidence gets weighed.
Delay and Disruption Are Two Different Claims, and You Probably Have Both
Delay is time you could not work. Disruption is time you worked at reduced productivity because of somebody else's sequence.
For an electrical sub, disruption is usually the bigger number and almost always the worse-documented one.
| Delay | Disruption | |
|---|---|---|
| What it looks like | Crew standing in the gang box area with nothing available | Crew working, but taking half again as long per circuit |
| Typical electrical cause | Area not released, gear not delivered, permit or inspection not cleared, RFI unanswered | Stacked trades, out-of-sequence work, re-mobilizing to the same area three times, working around scaffold and ceiling grid |
| How you prove it | Idle hours, on a specific date, with the blocked activity named | Hours per unit of work in a clean period vs. the impacted period |
| Where it usually dies | Missed notice window | No baseline — nobody was recording hours against scope before the mess started |
The electrical version of disruption is specific and worth naming in your notes, because generic language ("we were impacted") proves nothing:
- Trade stacking — you, the mechanical crew, and the drywall crew all in the same 900 square feet of corridor.
- Out-of-sequence work — trim before the grid, terminations before the gear, rough-in in the only area that happens to be open instead of the area you laid out.
- Re-mobilization — carrying the same cart back to the same suite for the third time because it keeps getting released and un-released.
- Dilution of supervision — one foreman covering four scattered areas instead of one working front.
They are not a substitute for your own hours. Anybody evaluating the claim will ask for the hours first.
Notice Is a Condition Precedent — Miss It and the Math Never Gets Read
A missed notice deadline can end a claim before anyone looks at your math — most subcontracts make written notice a condition precedent, meaning the right to recover is waived when the window closes, regardless of the merits. Read your subcontract before you do anything else in this post.
AIA A201-2017, the general conditions used on a lot of commercial work, gives 21 days from the event or from when you should have recognized it. Many subcontracts flow that down and shorten it — 48-hour, 3-day, 7-day, and 14-day windows all appear in subcontract forms. AIA A401-2017 flows the A201 timing down to the sub, so 21 days is the outer bound you are likely to see and anything shorter is a deliberate tightening by the GC.
Four things to check in your own agreement, today, before you have a live problem:
- The window. How many days, and does the clock start at the event or at the cost?
- The form. "Written" often means a specific thing — signed letter, certified mail, or an entry logged in the GC's project management system. An email to the super may not count.
- Who you serve. As a sub you notice the GC, not the owner. Your window is frequently shorter than the GC's own window upstream, which is why they want it early.
- No-damages-for-delay. Some subcontracts say your only remedy is more time, not more money. That clause changes what is worth pursuing, and its enforceability varies by state.
Notice preserves the claim. The dollar figure comes later, once you have the hours.
This is contract mechanics, not legal advice. For a live dispute with real money in it, a construction attorney in your state is the right call, and one of the first things they will ask for is your daily records.
What Your Foreman Writes Down on a Delayed Day
Eight lines. That is the whole spec, and it fits on a phone or a clipboard.
- Date and day of week.
- Crew on site — names and classifications, not just a headcount.
- In and out times per person.
- The activity you staged for — the specific scope, area, panel, or circuits you showed up to install.
- What blocked it — named condition, named area, named trade.
- The clock on the block — from what time to what time no productive work was available.
- What the crew did instead — the redeployment, with times.
- Who you told, and how — name, role, time, and whether it was in person, text, or email.
8 hrs — waiting on GCWed 8/6, crew of 4. On site 7:00a staged for gear-room feeder terminations, Suite 300. Gear room not released by GC — north wall drywall open, no ceiling grid, no temp lighting. No productive work available in that area 7:00a–11:15a. Notified J. Marsh (GC superintendent) in person 7:20a, email follow-up 7:41a. Redeployed 2 journeymen to temp power on level 1 at 11:15a; foreman and 1 apprentice idle 7:00a–11:15a. Crew-hours with no work available: 4 × 4.25 = 17.0.Nobody has to remember anything in month five. The paragraph does the remembering.
Two habits make that paragraph happen consistently. Write it before anyone leaves the site, and write it on days that seem fine too — you cannot tell in advance which Tuesday turns into an exhibit, and a delay log that only has entries on bad days looks built for the argument.
The other reason to collect it daily: that same sentence is what goes on the customer's billing backup. What to write on a timesheet covers the note itself in more depth.
Write Down What the Crew Did Instead
Claims get cut when you can't show what the crew did with the time. Anyone reviewing it will assume you found other work unless your record says otherwise.
Three situations, three ways to write them:
- Redeployed to productive work. Say so, with times and the scope. It is not an admission — it is proof you mitigated, and it makes the hours you did lose credible.
- Redeployed to low-value filler. Cleanup, material handling, and staging are honest answers. Write the actual task; "kept busy" is worse than useless.
- Sent home or held on site. Write the reason. Holding a crew because the area was promised at 10:00 and released at 2:00 is a defensible decision — if the record shows the promise.
Pricing a Delay Day and a Disrupted Month
One fork before you price anything. If the delayed work sits under a signed T&M authorization, standby and idle hours are usually billable at your rate schedule — you invoice them, you do not claim them, and your labor backup sheet is the whole document. If the delayed work is base-contract scope, those same hours are not billable to anyone until you prove the delay, which is what the rest of this post is about. The record you keep is identical either way; only where it gets sent changes.
You need two different calculations, and both need visible inputs. Every number below is worked example arithmetic — swap in your own crew, rates, and hours.
Idle hours on a single day
Example. Crew of 4 on a tenant build-out. Gear room not released; no work available 7:00a–11:15a, so 4.25 hours per person. Bill rates per your rate schedule (the same rates in your T&M authorization or bid documents):| Classification | Count | Idle hours each | Bill rate | Line total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foreman | 1 | 4.25 | $112.00 | $476.00 |
| Journeyman | 2 | 4.25 | $95.00 | $807.50 |
| Apprentice | 1 | 4.25 | $62.00 | $263.50 |
| Example total, one morning | $1,547.00 | |||
Note the rate column is the bill rate from the work authorization, not payroll cost. Never put what you pay your people on a document that goes to a customer or a GC — that argument is about your margin, not about their delay. Standby time has its own billing wrinkles, covered in billing for standby and wait time.
Lost productivity across a period (the measured mile)
The measured mile compares your production in a clean, unimpacted stretch against the same work in the impacted stretch. It is widely treated as the most credible method because it uses your own performance as the yardstick instead of an estimate.
Example. A crew of 3 pulling and terminating branch circuits:| Period | Circuits complete | Crew-hours charged to this scope | Hours per circuit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clean period (Jun 2–20, level 2 east) | 42 | 120.0 | 2.86 |
| Impacted period (Jul 7–25, level 3, stacked with mechanical) | 28 | 148.0 | 5.29 |
| Delta | 2.43 hrs per circuit | ||
Hours here are only the ones charged to branch-circuit installation; the crew was on other scope the rest of each period. That is exactly why hours have to be recorded against a scope, not against the job.
2.43 extra hours × 28 circuits = 68 extra crew-hours. At a blended example bill rate of $88/hr, that is $5,984 for that period. Run it with your own counts.
Here is the part nobody says out loud: that calculation is only available to a contractor who was already recording, day by day, which crew worked which scope for how many hours — before anyone knew there was a claim. The method is a timekeeping problem wearing a legal costume.
Two things to protect while the job is running:
- A clean baseline. Identify a stretch that was not impacted and note why it was clean. If the job was a mess from day one, say that in your records too — then the comparison has to come from a similar job, and it gets harder.
- Scope granularity. Hours against "the job" can't produce a measured mile. Hours against an area, floor, panel, or circuit run can. Even a note in plain English — "level 3 east branch circuits" — is enough to sort by later.
Assembling the Delay File Before You Need It
Do this once and it stops being a project. The file has six folders, and five of them fill themselves if the daily record exists.
- Contract documents — subcontract with the notice and delay clauses flagged, the schedule you bid to, and any updated schedules the GC issued.
- Daily labor records — per worker, per day, with the work-performed note. This is the spine.
- Daily field reports — crew count, conditions, delay events, who was notified, signatures.
- Notices and correspondence — every delay notice you sent, in date order, with proof of delivery.
- Photos — dated, with the area identified. A photo of open drywall means nothing without a note saying which of your activities it blocked.
- RFIs, submittals, and gear delivery dates — the answer date is the number that matters, not the ask date. RFI and change-order labor impacts get their own treatment.
The T&M Labor Backup Sheet in the same kit is the customer-facing version: date, worker, what was done, hours, bill rate, amount. All of it is in Excel and printable format at /templates, free, no signup.
Paper works. A binder and a disciplined foreman beat any software that nobody fills out. The only real question is whether the note gets written on the day, and that is a habit problem, not a technology problem.
If writing it twice is what kills the habit, FieldTimesheet captures the same note at clock-out — timestamped in and out per worker, assigned to a job, with a plain-English "what did you work on" note and GPS at the clock event as on-site corroboration — and exports it to CSV or a printable sheet. It produces the labor half of the file. Photos, schedules, RFIs, and the notices themselves live elsewhere, and no software prepares the claim for you.
The Delay Notice You Can Send Today
Send this the day it happens, on your letterhead, by whatever delivery method your subcontract requires. Fill in the brackets.
RE: Notice of Delay — [Project name], [Subcontract #], [Scope: electrical]>
[Date]>
[GC name], [Title]
[GC company]>
Pursuant to Section [__] of our subcontract dated [__], this is written notice of a delay to our scope of work.>
Delay event: On [date] at approximately [time], [describe the condition — e.g. "the electrical gear room in Suite 300 was not available for our scheduled feeder terminations; the north wall was open and ceiling grid was not installed"].>
Activity affected: [Name the specific scope and area — e.g. "feeder terminations, Suite 300 gear room, and second-floor east branch circuits."]>
Impact to date: Our crew of [__] was unable to perform this work from [time] to [time] on [date(s)]. We redeployed [__] personnel to [other work] beginning at [time]. Crew-hours affected to date: [__].>
Status: This condition is [ongoing / resolved as of __]. We are continuing to mitigate by [__].>
Cost and time: We are tracking the labor impact daily and will submit the associated cost and any schedule extension request in accordance with the subcontract. This notice preserves our rights under Section [__]; it is not a claim submission.>
Please advise when the area will be released so we can plan crew accordingly.>
[Name], [Title]
[Company]
cc: [Project file]
Two notes on using it. Send a fresh notice for each distinct event rather than one running letter, and keep the tone flat — the notice is a record, not an argument.
If the same condition runs for weeks, send a short update on a set interval and reference the original notice number.
Frequently Asked Questions
What documentation do I actually need to support an electrical delay claim?Dated daily labor records showing who was on site, for how long, on what scope, and what blocked them — backed by daily field reports, the written notices you sent, dated photos, and the RFI or gear-delivery dates that show when you got an answer.
How detailed does a daily record have to be to hold up?Detailed enough that someone who was never on site can picture the work. Name the floor, the area, the panel, the circuits, and the trade or condition that stopped you. "Waiting on GC" is not detail; "gear room not released, drywall open on north wall" is.
Can I reconstruct timesheets and daily reports after a dispute starts?You can write them, but they carry far less weight. Records created at the time of the event are treated as contemporaneous evidence; records assembled after the fact — especially ones that were all clearly typed in one sitting — get discounted or excluded. Reconstruct only what you must, label it as reconstructed, and never backdate anything.
What is the difference between delay and disruption on an electrical job?Delay is time you couldn't work at all — the area was not available. Disruption is time you worked at reduced productivity because of trade stacking, out-of-sequence work, or repeated re-mobilization. Most electrical subs have both, and the disruption side is usually larger and less documented.
How long do I have to give notice of a delay as a subcontractor?Whatever your subcontract says, which is commonly somewhere between 48 hours and 21 days from the event. AIA A201-2017 uses 21 days for claims, and many subcontracts flow that down and shorten it. Check the clause before you need it, and send notice the day the delay starts rather than waiting until you know the cost.
What is the measured mile, and what data do I need to use it?The measured mile compares your production in a clean, unimpacted period against the same work in an impacted period — hours per unit of work in both — and treats the difference as the lost productivity. It only works if you were already recording hours against a defined scope, per worker, per day, before the impact began.
Do photos and emails prove a delay on their own?No — photos and emails corroborate a delay claim, they don't carry it. A photo shows a wall was open; it doesn't show which of your activities was blocked, for how many hours, or by how many people. The labor record supplies that, and the photo backs it up.
Does GPS on a clock-in help?Yes, but only for one narrow fact: a GPS stamp at clock-in confirms the crew was on site at that time, which matters when someone claims you weren't there. It says nothing about what was blocked or what the crew did instead — that still has to be written down by a person.
The Short Version
You will find out you have a delay claim months after the delay. By then the only evidence that counts is what your foreman wrote down on ordinary days, before anyone knew it mattered.
Eight lines a day: date, crew, times, the activity you staged for, what blocked it, the clock on the block, what the crew did instead, and who you told. Plus a notice sent inside the contract window.
That is it. The rest is arithmetic you can do on the back of a bid sheet, and the forms are free.