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Follow the contract's format requirements to the letter

If the contract asks for a particular breakdown, form or reference, give it exactly that. "Substantially the same" is an argument you don't want to be having about your own money.

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

Why it matters

A contract that sets the form of an application hands your main contractor a checklist. A checklist is the easiest thing in the world to fail. Your own spreadsheet layout, a missing contract reference, a summary without their headings: each lets them say the application is not what the contract requires. In a good month nobody looks. Then comes the month your main contractor wants to avoid paying, or to escape a sum fixed by its own missed notice. The format point is the first place it goes, and the argument is about your money.

How to do it

  1. Copy every requirement for the application's form, content, headings, reference and attachments from the contract onto a one page checklist.
  2. Build your application template around that checklist, so the required headings and references are there before any figures go in.
  3. Use your main contractor's own form if the contract requires it, with your own breakdown behind it, not instead of it.
  4. Run through the checklist on every application before it goes, and initial it.
  5. Keep the completed checklist in the cycle folder with the application.

Example

Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.

The facts

A subcontract requires each application to be on the main contractor's standard form and to quote the order number. It must state the sum due at the due date and show how that sum is calculated under the contract's cost headings. The subcontractor's QS has been sending its own spreadsheet with a covering email.

What happens

  1. The main contractor's Payment Notice on application five values the work at £30,000 less than applied. It notes the application is not in the required form.
  2. The subcontractor's commercial lead writes the checklist from the contract and rebuilds the application template around the main contractor's form.
  3. Application six goes out on the main contractor's form, under the contract's cost headings, with the order number on every page and the spreadsheet behind.
  4. The checklist is initialled and filed with the application.

The outcome

Application six is assessed on its merits and paid within £2,000 of the sum applied. The main contractor cannot use the format point on any later cycle.

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