St. Pete · South Pinellas

St. Petersburg Construction Delay Expert and Schedule Consultant: Daniel R. Zorrilla

CPM schedule consulting and delay analysis for St. Petersburg high-rise, waterfront, renovation and public projects, from our Clearwater office, about 12.5 miles by road from the St. Petersburg Judicial Building.

Downtown St. Petersburg has added residential and mixed-use towers, and the city's waterfront, older neighborhoods and public facilities carry steady renovation and infrastructure work. Projects like these share a scheduling profile: tight urban sites, vertical sequencing that leaves little float, long-lead equipment and facade systems, and inspections that gate each floor. When one of those links slips, the dispute is about which slip actually drove completion.

Oxley's Clearwater office is about 12.5 miles by road from the St. Petersburg Judicial Building downtown. Daniel R. Zorrilla, J.D., BSBC, CGC, CFCC, leads the analysis and gives the testimony.

Owners and developers: fixed-fee schedule reviews while the project is running.

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.

Courts in St. Petersburg

State court: Sixth Judicial Circuit, St. Petersburg Judicial Building, 545 1st Ave. N., circuit and county matters for south Pinellas, with a circuit mediation office; many Pinellas circuit civil cases are heard at the Clearwater Courthouse.

Appeals: Florida's Second District Court of Appeal is headquartered in St. Petersburg, at 525 Mirror Lake Dr. N., and hears appeals from Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee, Sarasota and DeSoto counties.

Federal court: Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division, Sam M. Gibbons U.S. Courthouse, Tampa.

Arbitration: under the AAA's construction rules or another procedure the contract names, common on private projects.

High-rise and waterfront schedules

A tower schedule is a chain of repeating floor cycles: formwork, reinforcing, concrete, shoring removal, then the trades that follow floor by floor. A delay analysis on a high-rise has to show whether a disruption in the cycle, such as a crane outage, a late shop drawing or a failed inspection, pushed the structure, the building envelope or the elevators, and whether the path to completion shifted to another sequence as a result.

Dan's background fits that work. He also spent time as a project engineer and project manager for national and regional general contractors, managing residential, condominium, hotel and resort construction. That was his employment with general contractors, not Oxley's work. His experience as an expert includes high-rise condominiums, hotels and student housing.

Waterfront and older-neighborhood projects add other variables: seawalls, flood-zone elevation, utility conflicts and existing conditions found only after demolition. The question is whether the contract and the record put that time on the owner, the contractor or neither.

Records that decide a tower delay claim

On a high-rise, the schedule updates rarely tell the whole story alone. The analysis usually draws on records kept by the field and the trades: concrete pour logs and cylinder break reports, crane and hoist logs, shop drawing and submittal logs for the facade and other long-lead systems, elevator installation and inspection dates, and the threshold and municipal inspection history floor by floor. Read together, they show when each floor cycle actually started and finished, and where the cycle stretched.

The same records help an owner or a contractor during construction. Reviewing a monthly update against them can show early whether a reported recovery is real or only a change in logic or durations.

Public owners and project types in St. Petersburg

The City of St. Petersburg owns and operates Albert Whitted Airport and the Port of St. Petersburg, along with city buildings, parks and utilities. Pinellas County, Pinellas County Schools, the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority and FDOT District Seven also build in and around the city. Each uses its own contract forms, schedule specifications and time-extension procedures. These owners are named to describe the market, not as Oxley clients.

What we provide

As a construction schedule consultant during the project, and as a delay expert if a dispute follows:

CPM baseline schedules, updates, recovery schedules and schedule reviews, including schedule update analysis for owners and lenders' representatives
Time impact analysis for extension requests, prepared or reviewed
Forensic delay analysis using the method that fits the records, including 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.
Disruption and lost productivity analysis for floor-cycle and trade-stacking claims
Delay damages and extended general conditions
Expert reports, deposition, hearing and trial testimony, and mediation support

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.

Pinellas County consulting and expert assignments.

Airport landside improvements and expansion, Tampa Bay area. Delay and disruption.
Two bridges. Delay and completion cost.
Road and intersection reconstruction. Delay.
Gandy Boulevard road and bridge. Delay and earned value.
High-rise apartment, Feather Sound (Pinellas). Delay and change order reasonableness.

Credentials and independence

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 →

Elsewhere in Tampa Bay

See Pinellas County, Pasco County, Clearwater, Tampa and Hillsborough County; south across the Skyway, Bradenton & Manatee County and Sarasota; or read how we approach construction delay expert work. Call 727-821-9190 or send a message.