Writing
Notes on the contracts.
Patterns that decide whether a claim, a programme or a final account survives. Real clause references, anonymised numbers. Longer answers than the Contract Assistant gives.
Why most NEC3 compensation events get rejected
Three patterns we see on every NEC3 project: notifications without an event in 60.1, notifications outside the eight-week window, and quotations that don't separate Prices, Completion Date and Key Dates.
The JBCC final account mistake costing contractors R2M+
Final accounts go wrong long before the final account. Two failure modes — undocumented verbal variations and missed submission deadlines — and how to run JBCC contracts as instruments from day one.
What B2–B5 contractors get wrong about NEC3 programmes
The Accepted Programme isn't a Gantt chart you submit once. Submitted properly under Clause 31, it protects time and cost. Submitted as a bar chart, it does neither.
What these notes are about
Most money lost on a construction contract is not lost on site. It is lost in the paperwork that follows the site: a notice sent late, a programme never accepted, a variation agreed in a meeting and never instructed. These notes deal with those failures, one contract mechanism at a time, with the clause references and the sequence that keeps a claim alive.
They are written from the contractor’s and the contract administrator’s side of the table, for the people who prepare and respond to notices, quotations and payment applications. Numbers are anonymised; the patterns are real and repeat across projects.
Three patterns that recur
- The late or incomplete notice. NEC3 shuts the door on many compensation events after eight weeks, and an event notified without saying which clause it falls under is easy to reject. See why most NEC3 compensation events get rejected.
- The programme treated as a formality. Under NEC3 the Accepted Programme is the baseline for assessing delay. A bar chart submitted once and never updated gives the contractor nothing to measure from. See what contractors get wrong about NEC3 programmes.
- The variation nobody wrote down. On JBCC work, verbal instructions and missed deadlines turn into a final account fight months later. See the JBCC final account mistake.
Using the notes
Read them before the problem, not during it. The fixes are habits that have to be in place from the start of a contract: a notice register, a programme submitted and revised properly, every instruction in writing. For a quick answer to a specific question, the Contract Assistant is faster; for the documents themselves, the template packs give you notices and records that cite the right clauses.