What really causes construction delays, and why does it matter? At the 2025 AACE Conference & Expo, Truss Faber founder John Theiss joined fellow industry experts to unpack how conflicting standards and complex schedules can lead to disputes, and what professionals can do to steer projects back on track.
In the complex world of construction, often the schedule becomes a source of dispute. Delays trigger a tangle of causes, consequences and competing interpretations, many of which are shaped by technical and often conflicting standards. At the 2025 AACE Conference & Expo, Truss Faber founder John Theiss joined a panel of thought leaders to help navigate these challenges.
John’s firsthand industry experience as president and CEO of an international construction company, along with his background as an attorney specializing in manufacturing and construction law, provided the panel with real-world perspectives. In “Recommended Practice (RP) 29R-03 Under Attack – Again,” he explained how AACE’s recommended practices apply to everyday disputes and compared them to various frameworks suggested by other organizations. John also highlighted that relying solely on an organizational “standard” model without drawing on expertise and the facts can undermine an attorney’s credibility.
“The role of any expert witness is to assist the tribunal and render opinions on technical matters,” John said. “It requires the scheduling expert to correctly identify why the expert considers a procedure standard, and how and why it is being used to shape the expert’s opinion in the particular case.” AACE’s RP 29R-03 standard contemplates this on its own terms, appropriately so.
Regardless of the standard at issue, an expert will often pound the table and scream from the hilltop that a particular standard should be followed exclusively, with nothing more, which John calls the “all foam and no beer” approach. The fact that a committee of an organization voted to adopt certain scheduling delay guidelines may be relevant to some degree. Still, a vote is not a substitute for actual expertise applied to the facts. The expert needs to avoid the trap of relying solely on the vote rather than providing true technical expertise.
“The expert, not an organization, provides the expertise,” John advised. “A skilled lawyer on the opposing side should be able to easily expose such a trap.”