I'm worried the time bar has run on my compensation event
Something happened on the job weeks ago, and we have only just realised the subcontract wanted it notified.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
What's happening?
An event can sit on the job for weeks before anyone links it to the compensation event procedure. Think of the slab nobody expected, the late drawing, or the area handed over after the programme date. In the unamended form you must notify within 8 weeks of becoming aware of the event. Your amendments may have shortened that, or changed its exceptions.
Worrying does not answer the question. The awareness date, the exact clause and amendment, and whether your main contractor should have notified the event itself all decide whether the bar applies. Some of those are legal questions.
Two things make it worse: waiting, and sending a notification dated to look as if it went earlier than it did.
The solution
Today, fix the awareness date from the diary, emails or photographs, and read the notification clause and the amendment schedule. If the period has not closed, notify through the contract's communication system at once. Compensation Event Claim does that first, before the rest of the file is read.
If the period has closed, nothing is backdated. The dates, the evidence and the wording go to your solicitor with one question: what does the bar mean under your subcontract? Recovery prices the event so that decision rests on real numbers, and Compensation Event Loss Prevention then counts every clock from the day an event lands.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
A civils subcontractor on an NEC subcontract breaks out a buried concrete slab the site information did not show. Five weeks later the contracts manager wonders whether it should have been notified. A second event, an area handed over late and first noted in the diary 11 weeks ago, sits on the same file.
What happens
- The signed subcontract is read that morning. Its amendments cut the notification period to 6 weeks from awareness, and name the main contractor's project manager, through the communication system, as the recipient.
- The awareness date is fixed from the diary entry and the dated photographs of the slab. That leaves 1 week.
- The notification names the event and the clause it falls under, and goes out the same day through the communication system.
- The late handover is outside the period, and nothing is backdated. The awareness evidence, the amendment wording and the question of whether the main contractor should have notified it go to the solicitor.
- The slab event is accepted and a quotation instructed. Breaking out and carting away are quoted at £31,000 from the records.
The outcome
The slab event is implemented at £31,000 plus the Fee, the percentage the contract adds for overheads and profit. The handover event is held, with its figures ready, until the advice arrives.