On my current project we use in BPEL the data type duration to define the period that a user has to execute a task, before escalating. In xpath 2.0 there is a function:
add-dayTimeDuration-to-dateTime(xs:dateTime,xs:dayTimeDuration)
This function returns a new datetime with the added duration. It works great if you are working with period longer then 1 minute. [...]