§ 114.004.Limitations on Adjudication Awards

The damages section is a closed list. What is not on it cannot be awarded.

First is the balance due and owed under the contract as amended. That is the unpaid contract price, and it is the core of most claims.

Delay and acceleration costs are recoverable only if the contract says so. The balance may include compensation for the increased cost to perform as a direct result of owner-caused delays or acceleration, if the contract expressly provides for that compensation.

That condition is a drafting instruction. On a public project, a contractor who wants delay damages has to negotiate the clause before the first shovel, because the statute will not supply it later.

Second is the amount owed for written change orders. Written is the operative word; verbal direction to do extra work has no place on this list.

Third is attorney’s fees, and only on two conditions. They must be reasonable and necessary, based on an hourly rate, equitable and just — and available only if the contract expressly provides that recovery of fees is available to all parties.

A one-way fee clause therefore yields nothing. A contract giving the agency its fees but not the contractor’s does not open the door for either side under this section.

Fourth is interest, at the contract rate or, absent one, the postjudgment rate under the Finance Code, capped at 10 percent.

Three categories are excluded outright: consequential damages, exemplary damages, and damages for unabsorbed home office overhead — the last being a standard construction claim for fixed overhead a contractor could not spread across other work during a delay.