What is a measured mile analysis?

Why it persuades

Most disruption analyses depend on a theoretical productivity norm — an industry figure, a published table, an estimate. And every one of those can be disputed, because the other side can always argue your norm was wrong for this project.

The measured mile removes that argument entirely. It says: here is what MY crews, on THIS project, with THIS design and THESE materials, actually achieved during a period when nothing was disrupting them. And here is what the same crews achieved once the disruption started. The comparison is internal, and there is very little to attack.

What it requires — and this is the catch

Period-by-period production data: what was installed, where, with how many hours, week by week. It has to identify a genuinely unimpacted period, which means the records must be granular enough to show that.

And critically, the data must have EXISTED at the time. Progress reconstructed after the fact, for the purpose of the claim, fails in exactly the way a reconstructed site diary fails. A tribunal can tell — the records are too tidy, too consistent, and too convenient — and it will say so, usually in a sentence you will remember.

What this means on a Tuesday

The measured mile is not really a claims technique. It is a records technique whose payoff happens to be a claim.

Capture installed quantities against locations, allocate hours to activities, and do it weekly because that is the job — and the analysis is available to you if you ever need it. Skip it, and the strongest disruption argument in the industry is simply not on the table, no matter how badly you were disrupted or how obviously it was somebody else’s fault.

Terms

• Disruption
• Measured Mile