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Hello everyone. Welcome to the 5 Minutes Podcast. Do you know that there is a field in project management that takes care of using project management to address claims, disruptions, and even litigations? We call this forensic planning, and usually, this is a very traditional project management process used in large capital projects, and large construction projects. And what is the intent is to evaluate and analyze. For example, delays, disruptions, deadlines, extensions, and even claims from one side to another through the lenses of project management, for example. Was that delay really unpredictable, or could it be avoided? This is forensic planning. So they put together experts in the field of the project, plus experts in project management trying to analyze and have a critical eye to understand. Is there any responsibility for that delay? And if the responsibility is from one side or another side and second, if there is no responsibility, if it's something that is such a force majeure, that nobody could predict that. So this is the work. So most of the time, they support dispute mediation, and it's usually done when the project is done. And most of the time, just being very frank with you, this happens when there is a problem, when, for example, the contractor is not happy, for example, with the delays and wants to be compensated, or when the owner of the project is not happy with the delays of the contractor. I'm talking about this on the basic sense of delay, but there is also, for example, if there is a cost, if it's not a fixed cost, for example, there is questioning on the use of resources or even risks and even the way you put processes to mitigate that risk.
And this is a connection with, for example, enterprise risk management, process management, and law. So this is a very interesting area because many times when we produce a plan or something like that, we never think that this could be a legal piece in, for example, litigation. And in forensic planning. This is exactly so you create techniques, and you create processes to manage. If some disputes go to a court of goals, to a moderating group trying to analyze this through a very technical list. And just to give you an example, and this is, I would say, a real example that I faced in my life. For example, in a large hydroelectric power plant construction, the contractor had an agreement, a condition, saying that if there is any disruption on the entrance, on the access to the field where the labor is done, where the construction is done, they will stop the work. For example, if there is a protest, for example, blocking the main entrance, what will happen is that they will just stop working due to security, but they will not stop charging their costs, the cost of the personnel, etc. So what the forensic planning can do in this case, they can analyze and see if this is a real true blockage? For example, the blockage that they did on the access? Is there any secondary access that could have been used by the contractor to avoid that or not? So this is exactly the type of analysis because if there was secondary access, the litigation would become far more fragile.
Right, because there was another access. So you just didn't use the other access because you want to raise a claim without necessary. I'm just speculating here doing that. But if there was no other access, then it's true. And this is the kind of I would say it's like an expert evaluating the shadow, evaluating the risks, evaluating the scope in order to make sure that there is no lack of responsibility from one side or another. This can happen between the owner of the project and the contractor. The contractor and the subcontractor. And even I was thinking you can even start thinking about that, for example, when you outsource software development. So why not? Many times people think that the gunshot is dead, that nobody used that. But this is one of the tools that forensic planning used to compare. Okay. What was the true impact of that delay? Because, for example, just going back to the basic, if it was not. In the critical path and you had a lag, and the delay was smaller than the leg. Why are you asking for money for that? So what is the rationale? And this is the top. So you can find a lot of information, even software, to help you to do that. So this is something just to open your mind in terms of the applicability of project management. I hope you enjoy it, and this could be helpful to you; see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
