What the delay itself is costing, week by week
Delay is usually discussed as a date. It is also a cost, and a large one, because a postponed finish postpones the value the work was for while the costs of standing still keep running. This page prices a delay in its real parts: the contribution the delayed work would have earned each week, what share of that value can genuinely be recovered by catching up later, the team kept idle or diverted, contractual penalties, the money spent mitigating the slip, and the overheads that stretch with the calendar. The headline figures are the net cost of the delay and the cost of each week of it, the number prioritisation decisions are actually made with.
The delay and the value it postpones
Standing still, penalties and catching up
Your range
Disclaimer: This calculator gives estimates for general information only. It is not financial, medical or other professional advice. Contractual penalties and damages depend on the contract’s exact wording and the law that governs it; a figure here is a planning estimate, not a legal reading of any agreement.
What this calculator does
It prices a delay the way the loss actually accrues, in five parts. The postponed value comes first: the weekly contribution the finished work would have earned, multiplied by the weeks it starts late, then honestly reduced by the share that can be recovered when the work finally lands, credited on its own line so the gross exposure and the expected net loss are both visible. Standing costs follow: people blocked or diverted for the delay’s duration at their loaded weekly cost, because idle capacity is payroll spent without its output. Contractual consequences are separated into per-week penalties, which scale with stubbornness, and fixed damages, which do not. Mitigation is counted as a cost of the delay rather than a virtue of the response, since overtime and expediting exist only because the slip did. Extended overheads close the build: the facilities, licences and supervision that rent time by the week. The outputs are the gross exposure, the net cost after credible recovery, and the cost per week of delay, the figure that turns “we are six weeks late” into a decision.
How to use it
- Use contribution, never revenue, for the weekly value. A delayed week’s sales carry their variable costs with them into the future; what the delay actually destroys is the week’s contribution toward fixed costs and profit. Entering revenue inflates the answer by exactly the margin, and produces delay figures nobody should act on.
- The recovery share is where delay estimates go to be flattered. Assuming everything delayed is merely postponed assumes customers, seasons and windows all wait politely. Credit recovery only where a mechanism exists (a backlog that will still buy, capacity that can genuinely double up), and run the same delay at zero recovery to see the honest worst case before quoting the kinder one.
- Idle people are usually the hidden half. Teams blocked by a dependency keep drawing loaded cost while producing nothing toward the delayed value, and on the worked example that single line rivals the lost contribution itself. Count the blocked, not the whole project, and use loaded cost, because that is what standing still actually burns per week.
- Mitigation belongs in the delay’s cost, not its defence. Money spent catching up is money the delay caused; counting it here is what makes the comparison fair when someone proposes spending more of it. The test for any mitigation is simple: does it buy back more value, through the recovery line or a shorter delay, than it costs on this one?
- Quote the cost per week, not the total, in priority fights. A total belongs to one delay; a cost per week lets two projects’ delays be compared and lets the shorter, dearer week beat the longer, cheaper one. It is also the figure that shortens meetings: an extra week stops being “only a week” once it carries this price.
How it is calculated
- Lost contribution = weekly contribution x weeks of delay. Idle team = people x loaded cost per person-week x weeks. Penalties = per-week penalty x weeks, plus any fixed penalty as its own line. Extended overheads = weekly overheads x weeks. Mitigation enters flat.
- Gross cost of delay = the sum of those lines, each rounded to cents. Recovered value = recovery % x lost contribution, credited separately. Net cost of delay = gross less recovered value. Cost per week of delay = net / weeks. Range = net less and plus your percentage.
Worked examples
A six week slip on a revenue-bearing launch. Illustrative figures: the work earns $18,000 a week in contribution once live, so six weeks is $108,000.00 of lost contribution. Eight people blocked at $1,900 loaded per person-week is $91,200.00. Penalties run $2,500 a week, $15,000.00. Mitigation and expediting: $12,000. Extended overheads at $1,450 a week: $8,700.00. Gross cost of delay $234,900.00. With 40% of the lost contribution realistically recovered later ($43,200.00), the net cost of delay is $191,700.00, or $31,950.00 for every week of the six.
The shape of that number matters. Lost value and idle team are nearly equal partners in it ($108,000 gross against $91,200), while the penalties that dominate delay conversations are $15,000, under a tenth. Organisations argue about the visible penalty and shrug at the two quiet giants beside it, and this build-up is the corrective: the delay’s true price is mostly opportunity and payroll, whether or not a contract happens to name it.
The same delay, nothing recovered. Set recovery to zero and the net rises to the full $234,900.00, $39,150.00 a week. The distance between the two runs, $43,200.00, is the entire value of the recovery assumption, priced. If a plan’s credibility rests on recovering delayed value, this page shows what that belief is worth and therefore how hard it should be examined.
Reading your results
Start with the cost per week: it is the only figure on the page that travels, into prioritisation, sequencing and escalation decisions where this particular project is not the subject. Then examine the two biggest lines and ask the management questions they pose: can the launch’s value be partially live sooner (cutting the lost contribution), and can the blocked people be genuinely redeployed (cutting the idle cost, though redeployment to lower-value work recovers only part of it)? Finally, hold the recovery line up to the light: it is an assumption wearing a percentage, and on credit-worthy inspection it should have names, dates and capacity behind it, or it should come down.
Limitations
- Value erosion beyond the window is not modelled. Some delays do not just postpone value but shrink it permanently: a competitor launches first, a season closes, a regulation changes. The recovery percentage is the crude carrier for that risk; a delay facing true erosion deserves scenario runs at falling recovery, not a single optimistic figure.
- Morale, reputation and learning effects stay unpriced. Chronic delay taxes retention, credibility and the next negotiation in ways no weekly figure honestly captures. The number here is the floor of a delay’s cost, stated as such, not its ceiling.
- Penalties follow the contract, not this page. Caps, cure periods, force majeure and the enforceability of liquidated damages all live in the agreement and its law. The lines price what the contract appears to say; disputes about what it means are for lawyers, with this page as a planning aid only.
- Idle cost assumes the blocked time is truly blocked. People usefully redeployed are not idle at full cost. Where partial redeployment is real, lower the people count or the person-week figure to the genuinely stranded share, rather than letting the line stand at a theatrical full team.
Frequently asked questions
What is cost of delay?
The total economic loss a postponement causes, counted completely: the contribution the delayed work would have earned over the delay (less what can genuinely be recovered later), the cost of people and facilities standing still, contractual penalties, and the money spent trying to catch up. On the worked example a six week slip costs $191,700.00 net, $31,950.00 per week, even though the contractual penalty inside it, the part usually argued about, is only $15,000. The concept exists because the penalty is typically the smallest and most visible slice of a much larger, quieter loss.
Why is revenue the wrong figure for the delayed value?
Because delayed revenue is not destroyed revenue: the sales arrive late and their variable costs arrive late with them, so the margin between them is what the delay actually costs in that week, together with whatever portion never arrives at all (handled here by the recovery line). Pricing delay at gross revenue counts costs as losses and inflates every prioritisation decision downstream of the number. Contribution, revenue less its variable costs, is the standard and the honest input.
How should the recovery percentage be estimated?
By naming the mechanism, not by optimism. Recovery is real where demand is captive or contracted (a backlog that waits, subscriptions that start on delivery whenever it comes) and doubtful where demand is seasonal, competitive or promotional. A practical method is to split the delayed value into what is contracted (recover most), what is habitual (recover some) and what is opportunistic (recover little), then weight the three. The results show the dollar value of the assumption either way, so it can be challenged in dollars rather than in adjectives.
How does cost of delay decide what to do first?
By pricing urgency in the same currency as everything else. Dividing a job’s cost of delay per week by its duration gives the urgency-weighted priority used in frameworks such as WSJF: the work whose week of waiting costs most, relative to how long it takes, goes first. This page supplies the numerator honestly; an organisation that knows each major item’s cost per week can sequence by arithmetic instead of by volume of advocacy, which is most of what the concept is for.
Related calculators
Method: whole-delay loss build-up at user-entered figures, lost contribution credited with a stated recovery share, idle capacity at loaded cost, per-week and fixed penalties separated, mitigation counted as a cost of the delay, exactly as defined on this page. Last reviewed: 13 October 2026.