- Andrew Dutil lays out what he expects to change in project controls and contract administration over the next year, and where that leaves people managing public works contracts.
A Harder Year for Cost Estimates
West Palm Beach, Florida, November 11, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE, Andrew Dutil has spent his career on the owner and contractor sides of civil works contracts, most of it tied to the US Army Corps of Engineers. He expects the coming year to put more strain on cost estimates than usual.
Material pricing has not settled into a predictable pattern. Dutil says that unpredictability shows up first in change orders, where both sides have to agree on a number before work can keep moving. When the baseline price keeps shifting, that agreement takes longer to reach.
“A change order used to be a formality on a lot of jobs,” Dutil says. “Now it is a negotiation almost every time, because nobody trusts last quarter’s pricing to hold.”
Claims Consulting Will See More Demand
Dutil works in claims consulting and contract administration as an independent contractor, and he expects that side of the field to get busier.
Projects delayed by pricing disputes or supply gaps tend to generate claims later, once someone has to account for the lost time. Dutil says he expects more of those claims to surface over the next year, particularly on larger public works jobs where schedules were set before current pricing conditions took hold.
“The claims coming now are not about bad planning,” he says. “They are about plans that were reasonable when they were written and then got overtaken by events nobody controlled.”
He expects contract administrators to spend more time documenting the reasons behind delays, not just the delays themselves, because that documentation is what eventually supports a claim or defends against one.
Scheduling Discipline Becomes Non-Negotiable
Dutil holds a Project Management Professional credential and works regularly with scheduling tools like Primavera. He says the next year will reward people who keep their schedules current rather than treating them as a document filed away after kickoff.
“A schedule that nobody updates is worse than no schedule,” Dutil says. “It gives people false confidence right up until the point it fails them.”
He expects more project teams to tighten how often they revisit the critical path, especially on jobs where a single delayed shipment can move a completion date by weeks. That kind of tracking, he says, is what separates a change order that gets resolved in a week from one that drags on for months.
What Dutil Tells People to Watch
Dutil’s outlook comes down to a few things he tells people to pay attention to over the next year:
- Material and labor pricing that moves faster than contract terms account for.
- Change orders that pile up without clear resolution timelines.
- Schedules that have not been revised in weeks despite known delays.
- Claims language that gets written after the fact instead of during the project.
None of these are new problems, Dutil says. What is different is how fast they compound when pricing is unstable.
“The fundamentals do not change,” he says. “What changes is how much room you have for error, and right now there is less of it than there used to be.”
Dutil’s background includes OSHA 30 certification and coursework through the Defense Acquisition University in contracting and facilities engineering. He says that mix of technical and contract knowledge is what the next year will demand most from people in his field: someone who can read a schedule, understand a contract clause, and see where the two are about to collide.
About Andrew Dutil
Andrew Dutil is an independent contractor working in project management, project controls, contract administration, and claims consulting. He is a combat veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom II who served with the US Army and later worked as a civil engineer with the US Army Corps of Engineers. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architectural Studies and a Master of Architecture, both earned with honors from Norwich University. Dutil is a Project Management Professional and holds OSHA 30 certification, along with coursework through the Defense Acquisition University in contracting and facilities engineering. He lives in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Disclaimer: The views, suggestions, and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No The Finboard journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.
