CONCURRENT AND SEQUENTIAL CAUSES OF DELAY PAUL TOBIN Senior Associate, Clayton Utz, Sydney, Australia 1 Delays to progress and to completion inevitably occur on the majority of building and construction projects. There are a multitude of potential causes of those delays. The risk of bearing the effects of those causes are allocated, under the terms of the contract or at law, between the owner 2 and contractor. Factual and legal complexity arises when more than one cause of delay overlaps with, or is concurrent with, another cause of delay. There may also be concurrent effects attributable to delaying events that have arisen at different times. The difficulties when analysing entitlement to both extensions of time and damages due to numerous overlapping causes and effects of delay have been described by commentators as “conceptually challenging” 3 and a problem with “no easy solution”. 4 Consideration of this factual and legal complexity is an area of construction law that has continued to develop in the last two decades.