Why an As-Built Programme Is the Most Underrated Document on Any Project
Everyone on a project argues about the baseline programme. Whether it was realistic, whether it allowed enough time, whether a particular sequence was ever achievable.
Far fewer project teams give the same attention to the document that, when a dispute actually lands, tends to matter more: the as-built record of what really happened, activity by activity, as the project unfolded.
Why the record outweighs the model
In V601 Developments Pty Ltd v Probuild Constructions (Aust) Pty Ltd [2021] VSC 849, Digby J dealt at length with the appropriate methodology for measuring delay on a mixed-use Melbourne development, in a dispute that also turned on a project manager's independence and a successful constructive acceleration claim by the contractor. Among the issues traversed was the relative weight to be given to prospective modelling against a retrospective analysis built from what the as-built record actually showed happened.
The broader pattern across Australian delay cases, including V601 v Probuild, is consistent: where a retrospective, as-built analysis is available and properly constructed, courts give it real weight, precisely because it is not asking a tribunal to accept a hypothesis about what might have happened. It is showing what did happen.
What Kane v Sopov adds to the picture
Kane Constructions Pty Ltd v Sopov [2005] VSC 237 makes a related point from the opposite direction — what happens when the underlying programme itself cannot be trusted. The Court's criticism in that case was not really about methodology at all. It was about the quality of the programme being relied on. The project manager, Tivendale, conceded under cross-examination that there was no provision in the relevant programme for when shop drawings should commence, and the programme repeatedly failed to capture procurement and off-site fabrication activities that were, on the project's own evidence, critical to the sequence.
Warren CJ's broader observation about the standard of evidence required is, in substance, a demand for a properly maintained as-built record. A model is only as credible as the data behind it, and in Kane's case, the data had gaps the Court was not willing to paper over with assertion.
What a genuine as-built record actually captures
Most contractors maintain something they call an as-built programme. Many of these are, in practice, the baseline programme with dates nudged to roughly match what happened — useful for reporting, but thin as evidence. A record that will actually hold up captures more than dates:
Actual start and finish dates for each activity, recorded as they occurred, not reconstructed afterward from memory or a final invoice date.
Resourcing changes — when crews were added, reduced, or reassigned, and why, with a contemporaneous note rather than an after-the-fact explanation.
Sequence changes, including why an activity's logic or relationships changed, not just that it did.
Off-site and procurement activities — shop drawing approval, fabrication, delivery — tracked with the same discipline as on-site construction activities, which is precisely what the programme in Kane v Sopov failed to do.
Five things to capture from week one
None of this requires sophisticated software or a dedicated planning resource on every project. It requires a habit, started early and kept up consistently:
Update the programme on a genuine, regular cycle against actual progress — not only when a delay claim is being prepared.
Keep a dated site diary or equivalent record that notes what happened each day, including weather, resourcing and access issues.
File RFIs, variation instructions and design changes against the specific activities they affect, not just in a general correspondence folder.
Record delivery and fabrication milestones for anything procured off-site, with dates, not just confirmation that an item “arrived eventually”.
When an activity's critical status changes, write down why — the absence of that explanation was a specific point of criticism in Kane v Sopov.
“None of this is about preparing for a dispute that may never happen. It is good project management regardless of whether a dispute eventuates. ”
If a dispute does arise, the project that has kept this discipline going from week one will find that most of the hard work of building a retrospective delay analysis has, in effect, already been done by the project team, in real time, simply by keeping an honest record of what actually happened.
References
V601 Developments Pty Ltd v Probuild Constructions (Aust) Pty Ltd [2021] VSC 849 (22 December 2021), Supreme Court of Victoria (Digby J).
Kane Constructions Pty Ltd v Sopov [2005] VSC 237 (30 June 2005), Supreme Court of Victoria (Warren CJ).
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The As-built programme may be the most underrated document on any project for delay experts. A vital record of what really happened, activity by activity, as the project unfolded.