A pacing delay can best be described in the context of a project situation. When a contractor is involved in a project and realizes that there is, or will be, an owner caused delay to the critical path, a contractor may decide to slow down selected work activities in an effort to “keep pace with the owner’s delay”. The thinking typically expressed by contractors is “Why should I hurry up and wait?” The argument, when anThe argument, when analyzed in the legal context of delays, is analogous to deceleration. Deceleration is the exact opposite of acceleration. Deceleration is the deliberate slowing down of work on the project and is generally presented as mitigating the owner’s damages.
The distinction between concurrent delay and pacing delay has been discussed in the following manner.
“Pacing occurs when one of the independent delays is the result of a conscious, voluntary and contemporaneous decision to pace progress against the other delay. The quality that distinguishes pacing from concurrent delay is the fact that pacing is a conscious choice by the performing party to proceed at a slower rate of work with the knowledge of the other contemporaneous delay, while concurrent delays occur independently of each other without a conscious decision to slow the work”9 Thus, in the example above, the contractor’s pacing delay is not ind