Claims / Delay analytics / Forensic scheduling / Entitlement — the thesis test

Dashboard: Dashboard · synthesis: _LANDSCAPE-SYNTHESIS · grid: _MARKET-PROBLEM-MAP · lens: _OPPORTUNITY-LENS · matrix: _CROSS-COMPETITOR

Why this category is the thesis test

Our whole strategy rests on one claim: area 15 — change / variations / claims / entitlement RECOVERY — is empty of product. Every other landscape scan looked at tools that touch claims as a side-feature (Procore’s contract agent, Document Crunch’s notices, ConstructionDailyReport.ai’s claim diary) and all stopped at the doorway: they flag, organise, or draft, but none assemble cost + time + causation into a quantified, recoverable claim. This scan goes straight at the dedicated claims/delay/forensic tools — the place a real area-15 product would live if one existed. The question is not “does anyone mention claims” but the sharper one: does any tool actually QUANTIFY and help RECOVER money, or does the whole dedicated field also stop at prediction / analysis / document management?

The honest answer changes depending on how strictly “recovery” is read, so this note classifies every tool on a four-step ladder and counts how many reach the top rung:

• (a) schedule-risk PREDICTION — AI forecasts delay risk from historical schedules. Forward-looking, never recovers anything. (nPlan, Nodes & Links.)
• (b) delay ANALYSIS / forensics — measures what delayed the job and who caused it (TIA, windows, as-planned-vs-as-built, concurrency). Produces the time half of a claim; stops before money. (SmartPM, ClaimLogic, ForensicPM, ScheduleLens, Steelray, Systech.)
• (c) claims MANAGEMENT — structures evidence, tracks deadlines, drafts narratives/notices, links amounts to documents. Organises a claim; does not compute quantum. (ClaimMaster.ai, Astora, ClaimEOT’s evidence side, ContraVault’s Claims Assistant.)
• (d) genuine entitlement / quantum RECOVERY — assembles cost + time + causation into a quantified, recoverable claim: prolongation, disruption (measured mile), head-office overhead (Hudson/Eichleay), time-impact, then drafts the submission. This is our wedge. (Magra, ClaimDD/ClaimEOT, Masin AI, Delay Claim Builder.)

Finding up front: area 15 is NOT a product vacuum — four to five genuine (d) tools exist — but they are all 2024-25 micro-entrants, web-first, mostly unfunded/bootstrapped, none with a cross-firm historical-cost loop, and the category leaders by money and distribution (nPlan, Nodes & Links, SmartPM) are all in classes (a)/(b), one rung short. The wedge is occupied — but only just, and only by tools the size of a side-project. See the verdict.

Per-tool mini-profiles

Class (a) — schedule-risk PREDICTION (forecast, not recovery)

nPlan (nplan.io) — AI trained on ~750,000 past schedules ($2Tn of spend) that forecasts the uncertainty of every activity and flags risky/systemic delay drivers before they happen. Products: Insights Pro, Portfolio, Schedule Studio, AutoReport. Buyer = portfolio directors, PMOs, planners, risk/project-controls on major infra. The most-funded, most-data-rich name in this scan — and pointed entirely the wrong way for us: it predicts and de-risks the schedule, it does not touch entitlement, quantum, or recovery. Pricing undisclosed (enterprise). A forecasting engine, not a claims tool.

Nodes & Links (nodeslinks.com, product “Aegis”) — AI project-controls platform: schedule-integrity scanning, change tracking with audit trails, delay-driver identification, QSRA/Monte-Carlo risk, conversational AI grounded in project-controls logic. Buyer = schedulers, project controls, owners, GCs, PMO consultancies (Turner & Townsend is a referenced case). Says it is “especially” useful “if you’re filing claims” — but the product is schedule risk + delay analysis, not quantum or financial entitlement. Sits at the (a)/(b) seam; closer to nPlan in intent (predict/assure the programme) than to a recovery engine. Pricing undisclosed.

Class (b) — delay ANALYSIS / forensics (time half of a claim; stops before money)

SmartPM (smartpm.com) — automated schedule analytics + delay analysis: breaks end-date movement into critical-path progress delay, time gains, and planned recovery; attributes “what drove delay.” The best-known US schedule-analytics SaaS. Buyer = planners, GCs/CMs, owners. Explicitly stops at schedule analytics/risk: no cost-entitlement calc, no EOT quantification, no assembled money claim. Pricing undisclosed (demo-led). Class (b), one rung short of recovery.

ClaimLogic (claimlogic.app) — upload P6 → automated TIA, windows, as-built-vs-as-planned; matches activities, calculates variances, attributes delay by responsibility, outputs S-curves/Gantts/delay tables as dispute-grade PDFs. Quantifies EOT time entitlement and flags compensable vs time-only delay — but its founder states it “stops at analysis and report generation; it doesn’t assemble a full recovery claim,” and it has no AI (positioned as purpose-built deterministic software). £49–179/mo, 1–10 users. Buyer = planning engineers, delay analysts, claims consultants. The cleanest pure-(b): genuinely useful, transparently bounded short of money.

ForensicPM / FPM (forensicpm.com) — deterministic engine for concurrent-delay quantification, dependency-trace to milestone impact, activity impact-classification, “Top Movers” ranking, day-by-day as-built per AACE MIP 3.4. Ships 18+ MCP server tools exposing the forensic toolchain to AI agents (a Claude-style integration, like BuildPass). Buyer = owners, GCs, subs, consultants/expert witnesses. Measures delay, not damages — no cost quantum, no claim assembly. New forensic engine + “AI-native workflows” on the roadmap (early access). Class (b) with the most interesting AI surface.

ScheduleLens (schedulelens.com) — schedule-health vs DCMA 14-point, baseline-vs-update delay ID, critical-delay-path tracing, concurrency detection, LLM-generated plain-language delay narrative + Excel detail. Buyer = planners, PMs, consultancies on multi-month programmes. Explicitly “doesn’t quantify entitlement amounts or assemble recoverable claim packages — those remain consultant responsibilities.” Has shipped LLM narrative (more AI than ClaimLogic/Steelray); private/on-prem inference on the V2 roadmap. Class (b), narrative-forward.

Steelray Delay Analyzer (steelray.com) — automated half-step/Daily-Progress delay analysis on P6 per AACE 29R-03; identifies and quantifies finish-date delays incl. concurrent and but-for; reports, Excel, 3D Gantt. Buyer explicitly = “professionals paid to conduct delay analyses and serve as expert witnesses.” $3,990/user/yr or $390/mo. No AI. The established desktop-grade (b) tool with real published pricing; quantifies delay days, not money.

Systech “Delay Analysis Software” (systech-int.com) — daily-windows + time-impact engine (“30× more accurate than monthly”), early-delay warning, acceleration/mitigation analysis; built by Systech’s own senior forensic delay analyst. Systech is a global claims/dispute consultancy that productised an internal tool. Buyer = its own experts + clients in dispute. Stops at forensic analysis; no money quantum disclosed. Pricing undisclosed. Class (b); notable as the consultancy-productisation pattern (same pattern as Masin, below — but Systech kept it at (b)).

Class (c) — claims MANAGEMENT (organise, draft, track — no quantum)

ClaimMaster.ai (claimmaster.ai) — turns site events into “defensible claims”: Event Record Form with timestamp preservation, defensibility scoring to find gaps pre-submission, governed-AI narrative drafting, audit trails. Buyer = QS/claims consultants/contract managers, specialist subs, project teams. £39–99/mo (+ £1,299 whitelabel). Explicitly “does not automatically quantify costs, calculate prolongation, or generate financial recovery amounts… professional judgement stays with you.” Class (c): the cleanest statement of where a non-quantum tool deliberately stops — straight at our doorway, by choice.

Astora (astora.app) — reconstructs a sourced timeline from 500–1,000 project documents (emails, minutes, work orders), flags contradictions, links claimed amounts to source docs, monitors claim deadlines; outputs an “auditable evidence file.” Buyer = contract managers, legal/dispute teams (EUR-6M civil dispute cited). Explicitly does NOT quantify losses, run critical path, or generate narratives — “organises materials for humans.” Class (c) evidence-structuring; a potential input to a (d) tool, not a competitor to one.

Class (d) — genuine entitlement / quantum RECOVERY (the wedge — and it is occupied)

Magra (magra.app) — explicitly a “notice-to-recovery platform.” Ingests contracts/drawings/schedules/daily logs; tracks contractual deadlines (Radar); drafts change-order requests, notices of claim; and — the load-bearing part — computes quantum: direct cost, extended general conditions, home-office overhead via Eichleay, measured-mile disruption, and time-impact analysis, tracking “entitlement and cost confidence” per draft (sample output: a $240,500 claim). Buyer = GCs’ PM/commercial teams handling claims in-house (pitched against the “$50–150K-per-claim consultant”). ROI calc implies a ~$36K/yr Professional plan; no funding/traction/customers disclosed. Shipped AI: drafting, deadline radar, field-text capture, doc-Q&A. This is the clearest genuine (d) tool found — it crosses cost + time + causation + drafting into a quantified, recoverable claim. It is the real competitor the thesis said might not exist.

ClaimDD + ClaimEOT (claimdd.goodfaith.app / goodfaith.llc) — a two-product pair from Good Faith LLC (a one-person engineer-cum-lawyer outfit with a Contract Audit Bureau + Contract Software Bureau). ClaimDD = “Delay & Disruption Cost Evaluation Software”: calculates prolongation costs, disruption (labour productivity + measured-mile), and head-office overhead via Hudson/Eichleay, structured across 9 claim headings and 18 cost headings, output as traceable audit-ready cost-claim reports. ClaimEOT = its sibling that automates forensic delay analysis for the time/EOT half. Buyer = contractors, consultants, experts. Together they are an explicit (d) quantum engine — arguably the most methodologically complete quantum tooling in the scan — but bootstrapped, tiny, and split across two apps rather than one assembled claim. No AI emphasised; deterministic methodology-driven. Pricing undisclosed.

Masin AI (masin.ai) — GenAI platform spun out of Masin, an established global construction claims & disputes consultancy (founder Rohit Singhal; self-funded by the consultancy, raising growth capital). Covers contract analysis (clause-by-clause risk), claims management (drafts claim letters, issues contractual notices, and — per the company — calculates entitlements and evaluates EOT), and dispute management (arbitration/litigation pleadings with case-law citations, evidence organisation). Buyer = employers, contractors, law firms. Its own site emphasises “legal-ready outputs / pleadings” and is thinner on quantum than the press is; on balance a (c)→(d) tool — strongest on the narrative/entitlement-and-legal end, with quantum claimed but less visibly shipped than Magra/ClaimDD. The most credible team in the category (real consultancy pedigree, the Systech pattern but pushed up to (d)). Pricing undisclosed.

Delay Claim Builder (delayclaimbuilder.com) — “nine AI-powered tools… from notice through to formal claim, rebuttal, P6 programme analysis, delay-event tracking, evidence assembly,” covering 5 EOT methodologies (TIA, Windows, As-Planned-vs-As-Built, Impacted As-Planned, Collapsed As-Built) and generating submission-ready Word docs with programme AND financial analysis integrated. Buyer = claims consultant / contractor QS-commercial. Per-seat/annual licences, price undisclosed; mandatory human review (“not a law firm”). Reaches into (d) on coverage (notice→formal claim with financial analysis) but its materials are ambiguous on whether cost quantum is auto-computed vs templated — so (d) on intent, possibly (c/d) in execution.

(Two names exa surfaced — “Kalypso” and “Delay Cracker” — could NOT be verified to a live product on any search; treated as unconfirmed/likely conflation, not counted.)

Comparison table

COVERAGE scores (0–100, map order 1–21)

VERDICT ON THE GAP

Is area-15 RECOVERY empty? No — but it is occupied only by side-project-scale tools, and the category’s heavyweights are all one rung short. This is the honest, thesis-complicating finding, stated plainly because the whole strategy rests on it.

How many tools reach class (d) genuine recovery: four — Magra, ClaimDD/ClaimEOT (Good Faith LLC), Masin AI, and Delay Claim Builder — with Magra and ClaimDD the most unambiguous (both explicitly compute Eichleay/Hudson overhead, measured-mile disruption, prolongation, and time-impact into a quantified claim). Masin AI and Delay Claim Builder reach (d) on intent and coverage but lean more on drafting/legal output, with cost-quantum less visibly shipped. So the precise count is 2 hard (d) + 2 soft (d).

This refines, not refutes, our thesis — in three specific ways:

1. The product-vacuum framing is wrong; the scale/data/buyer vacuum is right. Our prior scans (37 competitors) concluded area 15 was “empty.” Against the dedicated field that is too strong: a quantum engine that does cost+time+causation already ships (Magra, ClaimDD). What is genuinely empty is a funded, credible, single-assembled-claim product with a cross-firm data loop sold to the commercial/QS office. Every (d) tool found is a 2024-25 micro-entrant: no disclosed funding (Magra), a one-person LLC split across two apps (ClaimDD/ClaimEOT), a consultancy side-build (Masin), or an opaque single-page site (Delay Claim Builder). None has the distribution, capital, or proprietary cross-firm dataset our thesis treats as the moat.

2. The nearest real competitor is Magra, and it is close. Magra is functionally the product our synthesis describes wanting to build — free-ish capture (field text) feeding a paid quantum-recovery layer, priced transparently-ish (~$36K/yr) against the consultant, pitched to the GC’s in-house commercial team. It is the single most important name from this scan. It validates the wedge is real and buildable — and warns the window is open but not unguarded. Its gaps vs our thesis: US-centric framing, GC (not QS-consultant/UK-fit-out) buyer, no cross-firm historical-cost benchmarking (area 21 = 10), no funding/traction moat yet.

3. Area 21 (cross-firm historical cost) remains genuinely empty even here. Not one (d) tool reuses cross-firm claim/cost outcomes to price or strengthen the next claim — they each work a single project from a single firm’s documents. The compounding-data moat our thesis leans on is still unoccupied at every tier, including the dedicated claims tier. This is the part of the thesis the scan leaves fully intact.

The category structure, in one line: the money and distribution sit in classes (a)/(b) — nPlan (huge dataset, prediction), Nodes & Links (project controls), SmartPM/Steelray/Systech (delay analysis) — all of which deliberately stop before quantum; the recovery step itself is being worked only by a handful of unfunded micro-tools. So the field is shaped exactly like a market on the cusp of being defined: the incumbents predict and analyse, the doorway to money is crossed only by startups too small to defend it yet.

What the real competitor looks like, now that we’ve seen it: Magra is the template — notice-radar + evidence ingestion + a quantum engine (Eichleay/measured-mile/TIA) + AI drafting, sold to the contractor’s commercial team as “recover the money the consultant charges $50-150K to recover.” To beat it we differentiate on (i) buyer/geography (UK mid-market QS/fit-out commercial vs US GC), (ii) the cross-firm historical-cost/claim-outcome loop none of them have (the area-21 moat), and (iii) depth + accountability where output enters an adversarial process (Document Crunch’s own moat logic). Building a thinner Magra is not a wedge; the wedge is Magra-class quantum plus the compounding cross-firm data layer for a buyer the incumbents and the platforms both ignore.

CONFIRM or THREATEN? Refine-and-mild-threaten, not confirm-clean. The absolute claim “no one recovers money” is now false at the micro scale and must be retired — there are 2–4 genuine (d) tools and Magra is a real, named competitor running our exact motion. But the defensible version of the thesis survives intact and arguably stronger: the recovery layer is real, buildable, and validated by Magra’s existence; it is contested only by unfunded side-projects; the credible incumbents (nPlan, N&L, SmartPM) are structurally parked one rung short in prediction/analysis; and the cross-firm historical-cost moat (area 21) that makes the position durable is empty across the entire dedicated field. Action: re-write the synthesis’s area-15 line from “empty of product” to “occupied only by sub-scale micro-entrants — led by Magra — with no data moat,” add Magra to the target board as the nearest-competitor / GO-near watch (the claims-side analog of ConstructionDailyReport.ai), and keep area 21 as the un-threatened core of the moat.

Sources

Vendor product/pricing pages (WebFetch, 2026-06-16): magra.app (+ /roi-calculator, /solutions/docs), claimmaster.ai, claimlogic.app, astora.app, forensicpm.com, schedulelens.com, smartpm.com, steelray.com, systech-int.com, nplan.io, nodeslinks.com, delayclaimbuilder.com. ClaimDD/ClaimEOT and Good Faith LLC via exa search+answer (JS-only site; claimdd.goodfaith.app, goodfaith.llc/software). Masin AI background (founder, consultancy spin-out, self-funded) via exa answer + Indian Infrastructure/IndianStartupNews/CBNME press. Discovery via exa search across the six seeded queries + four additional angles (claim narrative/quantum, variation/QS recovery, consultancy productisation, AI claims startups). “Kalypso” and “Delay Cracker” surfaced by exa but unverifiable to a live product — excluded. No app-store presence for any tool (all web/desktop) — Magra app-store pull returned an unrelated magazine app, discarded.