Running a building site

If you already know die Behinderung, you know it as disability, and that is how ordinary German uses it. On a building site the same noun means something else entirely: anything that stops a contractor working as planned — drawings that have not arrived, a previous trade that has not finished, an access road closed to deliveries. The verb behind it, behindern, simply means to obstruct, and the site has kept that plain sense. It matters because the obstruction has to be put in writing. Die Behinderungsanzeige is the contractor’s notice that the work is being held up and why; sent promptly, it is the basis for eine Bauzeitverlängerung and sometimes for Mehrkosten, and without it a delay usually stays the contractor’s own problem. So a site manager who says wir werden behindert is not talking about anybody’s health. He is opening a claim.