Nobody knows which records my subcontract requires
The subcontract says what records we must keep, and nobody has ever listed them.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
What's happening?
Subcontracts can be very specific about records. Yours may want daywork sheets in a set form within set days, or notices sent to stated addresses. It may tie progress records to payment, or require cost records to be open to inspection. If nobody has listed these duties, the site has little chance of meeting them.
Miss one and, depending on the terms, you can weaken a claim or a payment. It is far safer to find each duty at the start than at the final account. A delay claim built on the records the subcontract itself asked for is the hardest kind to argue with.
On a job already running, some of those records may already be missing. Whether that matters turns on the clause. If its meaning or legal effect is disputed, that is a question for your solicitor, not a checklist.
The solution
Spend one honest hour with the subcontract. List every record it requires: the form, the timing, who receives it and any inspection or payment condition. Give each a named keeper, put the dates in the project register and set up a same-day route for possible notices. On a running job, check what has been kept against the signed documents, noting each clause and version, and keep everything that exists.
Delay & Disruption Loss Prevention turns that list into your site's routine and proves it on a live month, against what the site already produces. The register makes each duty visible and owned. It cannot recreate a record that was missed, and on its own it does not prove you are owed money.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
A groundworks subcontractor signs an amended subcontract for a school extension. Nobody has listed what records the amendments require. Listing them takes one hour with the subcontract.
What happens
- The checklist lists daywork sheets in the subcontract's form, to the main contractor's site manager, within the stated days. It lists delay notices to the named address, and monthly progress photographs as a condition of each interim application.
- It also lists cost records for the provisional sum work, kept open to inspection. And it lists vesting evidence, the proof of ownership needed before materials stored off site can be paid for.
- Each record gets a named keeper, its form, its timing and its recipient. The dates go into the project register.
- One duty found in the same read cannot wait for the monthly check. Photographs of work before it is covered up are a condition of payment for a section due to be backfilled next week. The foreman is told before the excavator moves.
- The first monthly check shows the daywork sheets went in late for the first 2 weeks, and on time after that. The progress photographs for month 1 were never taken as a set.
- The month 1 photographs are gathered from the engineer's phone and labelled as put together later. The month 1 application is noted as having gone in without them.
- From month 2 the photographs go in with each application and are accepted without query.
The outcome
A 4-week access delay is later claimed at £84,000. The notices and cost records the subcontract asked for are all on file. The main contractor's surveyor agrees the figure from the records, not from a negotiation.