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Get every notice from site to the office the same day

A default notice runs from the day it reaches site, not the day your office reads it, so a same-day route gives you the whole period.

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

Why it matters

Main contractors often serve notices where the work is: the site cabin, the supervisor's email, the site manager's hand. Your subcontract says how notices must be served. Whether one handed over in the cabin counts is a question for your solicitor, so treat it as running from the day it arrived. A short period can be half gone before anyone who can answer it knows it exists. The same goes for the smaller paper a default case is built from: complaints about progress, directions to remove work, letters asking for more resources. A same-day route, with one person responsible at each end, costs nothing to run.

How to do it

  1. Read the notices clause and note the addresses and people it names.
  2. Name the person who opens the post and email on site, and a deputy for holidays.
  3. Send the commercial team anything that is addressed to the company, names a default, or directs work to be removed or redone, the same day.
  4. Log each item with the date it arrived, and put the end of any period it starts in the diary.
  5. Go through the log with the site supervisor every Friday, so nothing that arrived on site is left unanswered.

Example

Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.

The facts

A plastering subcontractor's supervisor is handed a letter in the site cabin on a Wednesday. Addressed to the company, it says the subcontractor is failing to proceed regularly and diligently on the east wing, meaning progress is too slow. The main contractor may terminate if the default continues for 7 days.

What happens

  1. The supervisor scans the letter to the commercial manager within the hour and logs it as received that Wednesday.
  2. The commercial manager counts the 7 days from the Wednesday, not from the day she read it, and puts the end date in the diary.
  3. The labour returns and the dates the east wing was released are gathered. The written reply goes on the Friday with them attached.

The outcome

The reply is on file 5 days before the period ends. On the previous job, a letter left on the cabin desk reached the office only when its period had nearly run.

To have this set up for you, see our Termination Prevention service.