They're meant to compensate, not punish: courts will refuse to enforce a rate that functions as a penalty rather than a reasonable forecast of the harm caused by delay. On construction contracts the rate is stated per calendar day and often folds in the agency's added inspection and oversight costs.
On public projects the daily figure can also reflect the public cost of delay — extended detours, deferred use of a treatment plant, or lost revenue on a toll facility — which is why rates vary so widely from job to job. Some contracts add separate damages for missing interim milestones, not just final completion, so total schedule exposure can be larger than the headline number suggests. Because liquidated damages directly shape your schedule risk and contingency, knowing the daily rate before you bid is essential. Nonlinear extracts the liquidated damages figure automatically during Spec Takeoff — one of the specific parameters it's tuned to surface — so estimators can weigh schedule exposure while the bid is still on the table.
