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We are not tracking our NEC notification deadlines

Events keep landing on the job, and nobody is counting the weeks each one has left.

Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.

If events have already piled up unnotified and unquoted, see what to do when compensation events are drifting on your NEC job.

What's happening?

On an NEC job, events land before anyone has checked the notification rules that apply: late access, a changed drawing, a missing item. Your subcontract's form, options, amendments and Scope decide what starts the clock, who must notify, to whom, and how long you have. The familiar 8 weeks is not a safe substitute.

For each event you need a record: when you became aware and how you know, the clause used, proof of sending, and any exceptions. Notifying, quoting, pricing and time are related, but they are separate questions.

Miss a period and you may lose the change to your price and your dates. What a missed period actually costs you depends on your own subcontract, and needs proper advice.

The solution

Give every event a line in a log the day it is spotted. Record the awareness date and its evidence, the period from your signed subcontract, the recipient, the channel and the deadline. Anything close to its deadline is dealt with that day, not at the weekly review. Compensation Event Loss Prevention sets that log up and runs it with you for a live month.

Only enter periods checked against your amendment schedule, never the 8 weeks remembered from another job. The backlog may already hold events that are out of time. Compensation Event Claim sets out their dates and wording for advice, and rebuilds the ones still worth pressing.

Example

Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.

The facts

A subcontractor's commercial lead sets up a time bar tracker for clause 61.3 on a job with an amended subcontract. The team remembers 8 weeks from awareness from other jobs.

What happens

  1. The first entry is not an event but the rule. The amendment schedule gives 5 weeks from awareness, not 8, and names the recipient and the communication system.
  2. Each event goes in as it is spotted. The entry records where the awareness date comes from, the clause for the deadline, who is responsible and the recipient.
  3. The date of service and the quotation step are kept apart from the notification.
  4. Anything within 10 days of its deadline is flagged the day it is entered, not at the weekly review.
  5. Two of the 15 events entered in the first two months are inside that window on the day they are found. Both are notified in time.
  6. The tracker shows, for each event, whether its date is proved by a service record or still unchecked.
  7. The quotation column shows that notifying in time secures nothing by itself: one quotation for £18,000 is assessed at £12,000 on the records behind it.

The outcome

At the end of the second month the tracker has a named person running it, a deputy, and no event with an unchecked date.