NEC3 ECC: Option A Indirect Cost Recovery

The Client is responsible for design and has not provided working areas where we can install our assets productively. This is the main cause of our claims for out of sequence working. We are also claiming prelims there is a huge amount of re-planning works.

Under option A we are not entitled to recover the cost of putting the NCE quotes together and we are not claiming this. But as we are claiming so many NCEs now we need several Change Control Managers (Senior QSs) to manage this change. They issue NCEs and EWNs on the A-Site project portal. We do want to claim for these costs. But the Client has rejected the NCE stating that these are “indirect costs” and should be included in our fee or overheads. Is this right? Do we have any other options other than adjudication?

Two issues here :

  1. the excluded cost that you are not allowed to charge is “the cost of preparing quotations”. Taken literally, that is putting together the quotation, not all the planning etc which you are doing as that is part of the compensation event.

  2. But the people need to satisfy the criteria in People 1 of the Shorter SCC, namely their normal place of working needs to be in the Working Areas, otherwise they are included in the Fee. So to qualify, unless a grown up agreement can be reached, you may need to re-locate them to there.