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Put every notice period and time bar in the diary before work starts

A notice period only protects you if someone knows it has started, and a diary set up before work starts makes sure someone does. List every notice the subcontract requires, and start each one in the diary on the day its event happens.

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

Why it matters

Subcontracts carry more notices than anyone remembers: for delay, variations, loss and expense, disputed deductions and defects. Amendments often shorten them, or make them conditions of more time or money. Nobody learns the list by reading the subcontract once at signing. Usually a time bar is found when the first claim is rejected for lateness. A diary set up before work starts turns each period into a date the moment an event is recorded.

How to do it

  1. Read the subcontract and its amendments for every duty to give notice. List each one with its trigger, its period, its form and where it must be sent.
  2. Mark the ones that are conditions of more time or money: they are the time bars.
  3. Set up the diary so each period starts on the date an event is recorded, with a reminder at half the period.
  4. Name one person to send each kind of notice and one to check it went, in the form and to the address the subcontract names.
  5. Check the diary against the site diary each week, so no recorded event is left without its notice.

Example

Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.

The facts

A mechanical subcontractor signs a £1.6m subcontract with 14 notice obligations, 5 of them time bars, the shortest 7 days for delay.

What happens

  1. The subcontractor lists the 14 with their triggers, periods, forms and addresses, and marks the 5 time bars.
  2. It sets up the diary so that each event the site manager records brings up its notice deadline the same day. A reminder at half the period comes with it.
  3. The site manager records late design information on a Tuesday. The reminder comes up on the Friday, and the notice goes on the Monday, day 6.

The outcome

In the first year the subcontractor gives 22 notices, all inside their periods. The £64,000 of claims they support are assessed on their merits, and none is rejected for lateness.

To have this done for you, see our Post-Signing Contract Review service.