Hillsborough County · Tampa, Temple Terrace, Plant City

Hillsborough County Construction Expert Witnesses

Delay, disruption, termination, construction defects and first-party claims.

Delay analysis and construction schedule consulting for public works, utility, transportation and private projects across Hillsborough County, led by Daniel R. Zorrilla, J.D., BSBC, CGC, CFCC.

Hillsborough County has three incorporated cities, Tampa, Temple Terrace and Plant City, and a large unincorporated area where much of the county's growth has happened. That growth means roads and interchanges, water and wastewater plants, schools, fire stations and private communities, built under contracts with very different schedule requirements. This page covers county-wide work; for downtown Tampa matters, see the Tampa page.

Oxley's office in Clearwater is about 17 miles by road from downtown Tampa and the county's main courthouse. We work on matters in Plant City, Brandon, Riverview and elsewhere in the eastern and southern county as well as in Tampa.

Contractors: time questions on a live project are easier to analyze while the records are current. The analysis addresses what the schedule and records show.

Public owners and the contracts they use

Public owners active in the county include the Hillsborough County government, the Cities of Tampa, Temple Terrace and Plant City, the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority, Port Tampa Bay, the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority, Hillsborough Area Regional Transit, Hillsborough County Public Schools and FDOT District Seven, which serves Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties from its Tampa headquarters. They are named to describe the county's construction market, not as Oxley clients.

Public contracts tend to share features that drive delay disputes:

Detailed schedule specifications that set the baseline, the update cycle and what a time extension request must contain
Notice and claim deadlines tied to the schedule submittals
Liquidated damages for late completion and milestone dates
Change order and payment processes that can affect the contractor's cash flow and sequence

Whether a time request satisfied the contract is a question for counsel and the tribunal. What we can show is what the schedule, the updates and the record support about the time itself.

Dan has spoken on public construction procurement. Dan presented with Brett Henson, Shareholder, Carlton Fields, and a county aviation attorney, at the Florida Airports Council's 2026 annual conference on construction procurement and Florida's Local Government Prompt Payment Act, addressing project-management practice. See event details.

Help for owners as well as contractors

Many county disputes can be narrowed before they start. Oxley works on both sides of the schedule, never for both parties on the same project:

For public owners and developers: help with schedule specifications, baseline review, TIA review and extension-of-time analysis.
For contractors and subcontractors: baseline schedules, updates, time impact analyses and requests for equitable adjustment.
For counsel: forensic delay analysis, rebuttal of an opposing expert, and testimony.

When to bring in a schedule consultant

On public work, the record that decides a time dispute is built month by month. A construction schedule consultant is most useful at a few points:

When the baseline is submitted and reviewed, before it becomes the measuring stick for every later request
When a delay event is first noticed, so the time impact analysis uses the update in effect at the time
When an update shows completion slipping and the parties disagree about why
Before liquidated damages are assessed or a final time extension is decided
When counsel needs an independent view of what the schedules support before positions harden

Courts serving Hillsborough County

State court: Thirteenth Judicial Circuit (Hillsborough County only), George E. Edgecomb Courthouse, 800 E. Twiggs St., Tampa, with a Plant City courthouse at 301 N. Michigan Ave.

Federal court: Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division, 801 N. Florida Ave., Tampa.

Appeals: the Second District Court of Appeal for state cases and the Eleventh Circuit for federal cases.

In every forum, the delay opinion has to rest on a stated method. Depending on the records, that may be a windows analysis, an as-planned versus as-built comparison, a retrospective time impact analysis or an as-built reconstruction, consistent with AACE International Recommended Practice No. 29R-03. The analysis also addresses whether delays were concurrent on the critical path. How concurrent delay is treated depends on the contract and applicable law, which are for counsel and the tribunal.

Selected project experience

Daniel R. Zorrilla's Florida work includes projects he managed for general contractors and later consulting and expert assignments. Consulting and expert work is described by project and issue type only.

From 2005 to 2008, he was a senior project manager in the Tampa office of Hardin Construction (acquired by DPR Construction in 2013), managing construction of a $28 million condominium in Tampa and a $124 million resort in Puerto Rico.

Projects managed.

Ventana condominium, Tampa. Senior Project Manager.
Regatta condominiums, North Beach (Miami-Dade). Project Manager.
The Park at Riverbridge, West Palm Beach. Project Manager.
Westin Sarasota hotel and Vue Sarasota condominium (Senior Project Manager for the general contractor).
Porto Bellagio condominiums, Sunny Isles Beach. Assistant Project Manager.

Hillsborough County consulting and expert assignments.

Airport people mover stations and guideway, Tampa Bay area. Delay analysis and acceleration.
Selmon West Extension (SR-618). Delay analysis.
Gandy Boulevard road and bridge. Delay and earned value.
Hospital bed tower, Tampa. Delay and disruption.
Hotel, Tampa. Delay.
Student housing, Tampa. Delay and termination.
Power plant duct replacement, Tampa Bay. Termination.
Apartment, Tampa. Contract/code compliance.
Mixed-use hotel, Tampa. Disruption and inefficiency.
Church, Tampa. Delay and damages.
High-rise residential, Tampa. Liability, delay, damages.

Infrastructure and utility schedules

Linear and utility projects behave differently from buildings. A road widening is often scheduled by segment and traffic phase, and a plant expansion by process system and tie-in outage. Delays come from utility relocations, right-of-way, permits, design changes and weather, and the critical path can move between segments or phases. The analysis has to follow those shifts with the contemporaneous updates, not with a single summary of the whole job.

Dan's project experience includes infrastructure, highways and bridges, airports, levees and federal facilities as well as buildings. David Hengelbrok, P.E., PSP, and Jeremy Easen, CGC, support the scheduling work.

Credentials

Daniel R. Zorrilla, J.D., BSBC, CGC, CFCC, leads the work and testifies. He has worked in construction consulting and expert work since 2008, with a return to project management in 2014–2015, and has testified in more than 40 cases. He has been retained as a consultant or expert in more than 100 construction matters. He is a Florida Supreme Court Certified County and Circuit Court Mediator (Florida Courts mediator lookup). He is a member of The Florida Bar and does not practice law.

We act for only one party on a project, and fees do not depend on findings. Dan's full profile →