What are dayworks in construction, and when are they paid?
Dayworks value work by the hours and materials used, and are paid where your subcontract allows them and the sheets were signed at the time.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
The answer
Daywork values work by the resources that went into it, not by measuring it. You record the labour hours, the plant hours and the materials used on an item of work. Each is priced at the daywork rates in your subcontract, or at cost, with percentage additions for overheads and profit. The standard forms allow daywork only as the last valuation method. It applies where a variation cannot properly be valued by measuring it at contract or pro-rata rates. They also make you submit daywork sheets, usually within a set period of the work, for your main contractor's representative to check. Three things follow from that. A signed sheet records the resources used. It is not an agreement to pay the work as daywork, and your main contractor can still argue it should have been measured. An unsigned sheet is a claim resting on your word alone. And daywork you submit for work that could have been measured is usually valued as measured work instead. So raise the sheet the same day, get it signed the same day, and write on it why the work could not be measured.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
A groundworks subcontractor is told to trace and repair an unmarked live drain found during excavation. Nobody can know the extent of the work in advance, so the subcontract's daywork rates and percentages apply.
What happens
- Each day, the gang's hours, the excavator hours and the materials go on a daywork sheet.
- The main contractor's site manager signs each sheet, with a note that the extent could not be known in advance.
- At the subcontract's daywork rates and percentages, the item comes to £4,300.
The outcome
The item stands at £4,300 on the signed sheets. Had the sheets been produced a month later and unsigned, the main contractor would have measured the visible trench and paid for that.
To have unsigned daywork tested against your records and valued under your subcontract's daywork terms, see our Variation Claim service.