Liquidated damages: the per-day price of being late

FAR 52.211-12 makes the contractor pay liquidated damages for each calendar day of delay until the work is completed or accepted — and they keep accruing even after termination for default. How LD clauses work.

When a contract has a liquidated damages clause, late completion has a meter running. The federal model, FAR 52.211-12, states it plainly: if the contractor fails to complete the work within the time specified in the contract, the contractor shall pay liquidated damages in the stated amount for each calendar day of delay until the work is completed or accepted.

The mechanics that matter

• Calendar days, not working days: weekends and holidays count. A month of delay is thirty or thirty-one charges, not twenty-two.
• Termination doesn't stop the meter: if the government terminates the contractor's right to proceed, liquidated damages continue to accrue until the work is completed — and they come on top of the excess costs of repurchase under the Termination clause.
• The amount is fixed at contract time: the clause is filled in when the contract is written; the number on page one is the number that runs on day one of delay.

The defense is a documented schedule

Excusable delay — weather beyond the norm, owner-caused changes, differing site conditions — stops or shifts the LD meter, but only when it's claimed with evidence: the notice given on time, the weather days logged, the change orders and their time impact recorded as they happen. A schedule narrative built at the end of the job competes against one built every day of it. That time-impact record, kept per job, is what an ERP for construction companies runs, implemented around the way each company works.