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What do you need from us to recover a price rise?

Four sets of papers: the signed subcontract, your tender as priced, your cost records for the affected periods, and the account and notices so far.

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

The answer

The subcontract decides which routes can recover the rise, and each one's base date, qualifying items, method and notice conditions. Send it complete, with the fluctuations option or price adjustment clause and its annexes. The tender pricing must be the version as priced, with the supplier quotes behind it, not an updated one, because every movement is measured from it. The cost records are the supplier price increase notices, orders, invoices and payroll for the affected periods. The increase notices date each movement, and the invoices show what was actually paid. The applications and the account show what has already been claimed or paid, so no rise is counted twice. Send any notices the clause required. Send any claim or assessment already exchanged in its original spreadsheet, because we check an assessment by working it through again. Where the work ran late, send the delay position as you or your planner hold it: we use it, and do not analyse delay ourselves. If a notice under the clause is due within days, say so first, and it is written before anything else.

Example

Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.

The facts

An electrical subcontractor wants to recover rises in cable and labour on a job whose JCT subcontract carries the labour and materials fluctuations option. A notice under the clause is due that week for the latest cable increase.

What happens

  1. The notice for the latest increase is written first, with the supplier's letter attached, and goes out that week.
  2. The subcontractor sends the subcontract and its annexes, the tender with the cable quotes as priced, the purchase ledger export and the period's increase notices.
  3. The applications to date show one month's cable rise already claimed, so that month is kept out of the new claim.
  4. The job ran late, and the subcontractor's own delay position is supplied and used for the delayed months.

The outcome

Every part of the claim can be worked out from the base date and the records. No rise is counted twice, and the notice for the latest one goes in time.

To have every route your subcontract gives found and claimed, see our Price Rise Claim service.