Consider the hazardous soil condition in the project. With all of the assumptions provided below, estimate the time and cost of the following resolution methods for a contractor:

Negotiation

Mediation

Arbitration

Dispute Board

Court

Present your conclusions in table format.

Assumptions:

Negotiation will take one month and a total of 200 hours at $100/hour with no attorney time.

None of the approaches involve any travel and travel related expenses

Dispute review board process will require 100 hours of company personnel time at $100/hour with no attorneys over a 20 day period.

Mediation will require 40 hours of attorneys at $300/hour plus 40 hours of company personnel time at $100/hour, and a $5000 fee for the mediator.

Arbitration will take 200 attorney hours, 400 company personnel hours plus a $15,000 for a single arbitrator and costs for arbitrator hearing rooms. Arbitration will not require any depositions of witnesses. This process will only take one week for a trial but the entire process will take nine months. All of the costs are contained in the hours mentioned here with the addition of the use of expert witnesses, 4 experts at $10,000 each.

Court will involve 6 experts at a total cost of $20,000 each. The Court fee will be $30,000. There will be 32 fact witnesses who will need to be deposed. Each deposition will take 8 hours of deposition time and 8 hours of preparation time per witness at a cost of $100/hour for company personnel, $300/hour for an attorney for those same hours plus $3000 for each deposition for a court reporter. The trial will take 20 court days, 10 hours per day for attorneys at $300/hour. The trial will use $100,000 of company personnel time. The process will also cost $10,000 for beer to reduce stress. The process from start to finish will take three years.

Assuming the contractor is owed $10,000,000 and wins each of these processes. Include in your answer, the interest cost of that $10,000,000 over the period of the process assuming a 10% simple interest rate and the amount is paid at the conclusion of the process, which seldom really happens.