The completion date has moved and you want to know how bad it is
A completion date that moves once can be ordinary. A date that moves twice, or a site where measured progress has flattened while payments continue on schedule, is a different signal. The way to tell them apart is pace measured on the ground over several visits, not the developer's next estimate.
What a moving date does and does not tell you
Delay by itself is not evidence of trouble. Permits, weather and supply move dates on perfectly healthy units, and a developer who revises once with a stated cause is behaving normally.
What matters is whether the pace of actual work supports the new date. A revised date with no change in the rate of construction is not a forecast, it is a hope with a number on it, and it will move again.
The second thing worth watching is whether payments have kept pace while work has not. A gap that keeps widening month after month means instalments are being triggered by dates or assertions rather than by work.
What the report contains at this point
The report is the same product at every one of these moments, and it costs the same. What changes is what it is filled with, and this is what it leads with here.
- Pace measured across visits, in points of contract progress per month
- A forecast completion date derived from that pace, given as a range with a confidence level
- Every revision of the date so far, with the cause recorded at the time
- What is on the critical path and what has to happen before the next report
- The share paid against the share built, and how the gap has moved
What to establish first
Useful whether or not you order anything from us. If the developer answers all of it in writing, you have what you needed and we are not required.
- 01Find the completion date in the contract and the clause that governs changing it.
- 02Check whether your contract has liquidated damages for late delivery. Many do; most buyers never look.
- 03Write down every date the developer has given you and when they gave it. The sequence is the evidence.
- 04Get pace measured. One visit gives a snapshot; three give a rate, and a rate is what a forecast can be built from.
Questions on this
Can you tell me when it will actually be finished?
We give a range and a confidence level, built from pace recorded on site, and we state what that estimate rests on. Anyone giving you a single date is guessing, including the developer. A forecast without stated limits is a guess wearing a suit.
The site looks busy in the photographs I get.
Activity and progress are different measurements. A crew working on finishes in one apartment photographs well and moves the contract percentage very little. That is why progress is weighted by stage against your contract rather than counted in photographs.