Pacing Delay
A contractor's deliberate decision to slow down a non-critical activity in response to a delay the owner has already caused elsewhere on the critical path, rather than accelerating to protect a completion date the owner's own delay has already pushed out. Generally treated as excusable rather than a delay the contractor caused.
Why it matters
Pacing only holds up as a defense if it's actually documented as a deliberate response at the time, an undocumented slowdown looks indistinguishable from ordinary underperformance once a dispute reaches forensic review months later.
On a real project
After an owner-caused permitting delay pushes the completion date back six weeks, a contractor deliberately slows a non-critical landscaping activity to match the new pace, documenting the decision in its daily reports as a direct response to the owner's own delay.
Who this matters most to
A Scheduling & Delay Consultant distinguishes a legitimate, documented pacing decision from an undocumented slowdown that just looks like poor performance.
Where this goes wrong
A contractor paces a non-critical activity in direct response to a documented owner-caused delay elsewhere, but never actually documents that the slowdown was a deliberate pacing decision rather than its own poor performance. The owner's scheduler later mischaracterizes the paced activity as an independent contractor delay.