Global claims: why Engineers and courts reject them

A global claim, sometimes called a total cost or rolled-up claim, presents the contractor's overall loss or delay and attributes it collectively to a list of events, without showing which event caused which part of the loss. It is the natural product of a project where the records were not kept event by event, and it is disfavoured almost everywhere.

Why it is rejected

• It shifts the burden. The contractor must prove cause and effect. A global claim asks the Engineer or tribunal to accept that the whole of the loss was caused by the whole of the events, and to do the disentangling themselves.
• It hides the contractor's own delay. If any part of the total is attributable to the contractor, or to a neutral event, the global figure is wrong, and there is no way to correct it without the linkage the claim omitted.
• It fails on concurrency. The first thing an Engineer looks for in a global claim is a contractor-caused delay in the same period. Finding one undermines the whole figure.
• The SCL Protocol discourages it. The Protocol recognises that global claims may be unavoidable where events are genuinely inseparable, but expects the contractor to show that separation is impracticable and that none of the loss is its own responsibility. That is a high bar.

The alternative: per-event narratives

The structure that avoids a global claim is mechanical. One register entry per event, with its own dates, cause, responsible party, and evidence. One paragraph per event in the statement of facts, citing its own records. One time impact per event, with overlaps addressed explicitly. A cost section that allocates line items to periods, not to the project as a whole. Built this way, the claim cannot be global, because each cause is already linked to its effect.

Where a global element is unavoidable

Disruption, as distinct from delay, is the usual case: productivity loss across many small events that cannot each be measured. Even then, the strongest presentations isolate what can be isolated, present the residual disruption separately with a measured-mile or similar analysis, and state candidly why finer separation is impracticable. A tribunal is far more receptive to a small, honest global element than to a large one presented as if it were specific.

This article is general information about how these contract mechanisms typically work. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for review of your specific contract by a qualified professional.