The delay analysis methods in common use
AACE International Recommended Practice 29R-03 sorts forensic schedule analysis into observational methods, which read the schedules as they exist, and modeled methods, which add or remove delay events and recalculate. Its nine Method Implementation Protocols run from the static comparisons of as-planned against as-built (MIP 3.1 and 3.2), through the contemporaneous windows and split analyses of the updates as issued (MIP 3.3 and 3.4) and analyses of modified or recreated updates (MIP 3.5), to the modeled methods: impacted as-planned (MIP 3.6), time impact analysis (MIP 3.7) and collapsed as-built (MIP 3.8 and 3.9). The SCL Delay and Disruption Protocol covers the same ground with its own terms.
Which method fits depends on the record that exists and the question being asked. A project with monthly updates that were accepted as issued supports a contemporaneous windows analysis; a project with only a baseline and an as-built record does not.
What Pathizer computes from your updates
Delay Analyzer reads the update history as it was issued, one active XER per data date. For every window between two consecutive data dates and every phase milestone you name, it measures how far the milestone moved, names the activities on the longest float path that carried the movement, and separates progress from revision: movement on work that progressed, or should have, by the window's data date is actual; movement on work entirely in the future is a Half-Step change.
Fragnets are counted in the window where they were inserted, so added scope is not absorbed into later updates as if it had always been there. Each driving activity's contractor comes from the project's Contractor Source, and contractor totals are kept by window and by phase. Strict runs of the AACE protocols are there too, each one started by the analyst for the method they choose.
What comes out on paper
After each analysis the five forensic reports of the latest analyzed update are filed in the project's single Delay Analysis folder, replacing the previous set: the Forensic Summary Report, which states one method for the whole project, the Window Analysis (TIA) Report, the Concurrent Delay Report, the Continuous As-Is Report and the Continuous Float Half-Step Report. Field users never see that folder. A Print switch on each file decides whether it goes into the folder's download; it starts on for the Forensic Summary Report and the report of the project's method, and off for the rest.
What it does not decide
The analysis is of the schedule record. It does not read the contract, decide entitlement or excusability, or rule on concurrency as a legal matter, and its findings are only as good as the updates behind them, which is why the latest analyzed update also gets the DCMA 14-point checks. Pathizer is new and has no tribunal track record.
