February 2, 2026 — by Director Avi Sharma, PSP, and Associate Director Ashleigh Marshall, PSP, at Delta Consulting Group

In the film Groundhog Day, every February 2nd starts the same way: the same alarm, the same song, the same mistakes—until the movie’s protagonist Phil Connors realizes the problem isn’t the day, it’s him.

Many construction projects experience the same phenomenon. Month after month, the same delay cause resurfaces. The same activity drifts onto the critical path. The same explanation appears in the schedule narrative, “recovered,” “mitigated,” “addressed,” only to unravel again in the next update.

These aren’t random setbacks. They’re signals. When delays repeat without meaningful change, the project isn’t encountering bad luck; it’s trapped in a loop. And in disputes, that repetition doesn’t just matter operationally, it becomes evidence for a delay claim later.

What a “Groundhog Day” Delay Looks Like on an Active Project

Like Phil Connors repeating the same day over and over because he continually echoes the same mistakes, a “Groundhog Day” delay, or rather a recurring delay, is a delay that consistently repeats throughout the life of a project because it is driven by a systemic, unresolved root cause rather than by a one-time event. Unlike an unforeseen delay, recurring delays are predictable because they are rooted in a project’s repeated breakdowns across planning, communication, approvals or resource management.

Common examples of recurring delays include:

• Persistent procurement delays
• Repeated late submissions and/or slow review and approval of submittals
• Late area turnovers repeating every phase
• Incomplete or poorly defined design: continuous changes to the scope of work lead to a recurring cycle of re-approvals, re-design and re-work
• Poor communication and coordination: information is not communicated in a consistent and formal manner, resulting in information living in too many places (i.e., emails, texts, verbal conversations, etc.)
• Cyclical Requests for information (RFIs) and/or sustained failure to respond in a timely manner
• Monthly schedule resequencing that “recovers” time, then loses it again (i.e., schedules repeatedly don’t reflect realistic durations or resources)

How Project Teams and Processes Accidentally Create These Delays and Claims

Ultimately, recurring delays are created by a failure of project parties to evolve and learn from past mistakes. These delays unintentionally arise on projects through a lack of understanding of why an issue repeatedly occurs, learning from the mistake and following through with revisions to project processes to correct the issue. Recurring delays build through small breakdowns that repeat across planning and communication procedures, with the same “fix” and same narrative applied again and again, without resolving the problem.

For example, a project may start with a schedule that looks good on paper but fails to reflect actual on-site sequencing or durations. As the project progresses, schedule timelines are degraded. The contractor mitigates by compressing the schedule with each update through activity stacking, reduced durations and creative schedule revisions, creating an overly optimistic schedule that ignores available resources and on-site sequencing. This “zombie” mitigation shows paper recovery without field recovery, which leads to document drift, where information doesn’t correlate across different project documents. The schedule narratives say that the delay has been recovered, while the daily reports say otherwise. The pattern is repeated with each successive update and schedule activities further overlap and become increasingly unreliable. The contractor fails to evolve by practicing stronger planning during pre-construction to build a reliable and realistic schedule that reflects on-site realities.

Another example is the sharing of project information across multiple systems or sharing information informally, especially when clarifications or changes are required. When information is not centralized and accessible to the entire team, and is instead residing in disconnected systems or being shared informally, information gets lost. Field teams end up working off of different information than what the office is referencing, and delays inevitably occur. When the project team fails to evolve by centralizing where project information and documentation is communicated and stored, recurring delays can develop.

By the time counsel and experts are brought onto a project to help resolve delay disputes, the pattern of recurring delays is already locked in. However, understanding where recurring delays come from is the first step toward preventing them. The next step is taking that understanding and making the necessary changes to project processes to break the recurring delay cycle.

Phil Connors Had it Right: Learning is the Way Out

Phil doesn’t escape the daily routine of repeating the same February 2nd by not changing himself; instead, he optimizes the day and escapes by learning from it. He changes how he plans, acts and responds to the world around him. Projects operate the same way: they break recurring delay cycles by learning something new after each failure and applying it deliberately.

In project controls, that learning shows up as behavioral change, not just schedule tweaks, narratives or recovery schedules. Breaking the loop requires acknowledging that the prior “fix” didn’t work and doing something materially different the next time the issue arises.

Practically, that can look like:

• Rebuilding schedule logic around how the work is executed in the field, not how it was planned in the baseline schedule—reality is more important than sticking to a baseline schedule plan that’s incorrect
• Working with your subcontractors to refine productivity in the field rather than compressing durations to preserve milestone dates
• Standardizing the way delay causes are tracked in order to identify recurring issues across updates, instead of being reframed each month
• Intervening when the same trade, area or approval process is repeatedly driving near-critical or critical path impacts
• Adjusting resource plans, access sequencing or turnover assumptions once patterns emerge, rather than relying on optimism

Learning isn’t theoretical. It leaves fingerprints in the schedule, the narratives and the execution strategy. When those fingerprints are missing, repetition stops looking like coincidence and starts looking like neglect.

When the Project Becomes a Dispute: Why Repetition is So Persuasive

Once a project enters a delay dispute, recurring delays can be a persuasive argument for claimants: one delay = disagreement, a recurring delay = narrative.

A one-time delay occurs due to a single, isolated, unforeseen event, such as a labor strike or differing site conditions, and typically leads to immediate discussions regarding responsibility through a discreet, fact-based dispute. However, the repetitive nature of a recurring delay establishes a narrative of foreseeability, knowledge and a failure to correct a fundamental process problem with the project’s planning, communication or execution.

Defenses for recurring delays thus weaken, as the ability to claim the delay as “unforeseen” collapses or arguing “means and methods” rings hollow when the contractor fails to adjust their approach to correct recurring issues. The schedules can become evidence to support the occurrence of recurring delays—illustrating, update after update, the same activities driving the critical path, the same float erosion pattern and the same recovery logic failing.

The failure of the project team to evolve or adapt after the first occurrence of a process issue suggests a lack of due diligence and shifts responsibility from uncontrollable factors to controllable and repeated negligence, which becomes a persuasive argument for claimants in a delay dispute.

Turning Déjà Vu into Proof, or Breaking the Pattern

For claimants, recurring delays are powerful because they tell a simple story to the trier of facts and, unfortunately, show a pattern. It demonstrates to the trier of fact that the project team was aware, and it happened repeatedly to be a surprise. This is not to say that repeated issues occur, but the response of the project team to those issues can be defining to the trier of fact. When the same issue appears across multiple updates with the same recovery logic and the same outcome, repetition itself becomes proof.

For defenders, the path is narrower, but not closed. The goal is to demonstrate learning. That means proving the response to later delays was materially or even slightly different than earlier ones. It requires tying mitigation actions to measurable outcomes, not just revised schedules. It can be demonstrated through improved communication of delays, resource reallocation, resequencing or corrected assumptions, each of which helps break the appearance of inevitability.

Ultimately, the trier of fact will decide whether they are seeing the same delay again and again, or a project adapting in real time. The difference lies not in intent, but in execution.

The Day Doesn’t Change—But the Project Can

Recurring delays are dangerous because they look familiar and familiarity breeds accountability. To a trier of fact, repetition suggests foreseeability, knowledge and a failure to adapt.

Phil Connors didn’t escape February 2nd by hoping for a better outcome; he escaped by becoming a different version of himself. Projects and project teams face the same choice on construction projects. If your schedule feels stuck, reliving the same month over and over, the real issue isn’t what keeps going wrong but instead it’s what no one learned since the last time it happened.

The day may not change. But the project still can.