The Contractor on our project have recently submitted their next programme for acceptance. The programme is dated the 28 February but was not formally submitted to the Project Manager for acceptance until the 11 March.
In the intervening period the 1 - 10 March the Contractor has encountered a delay due unforeseen ground conditions not stated within the Scope or Site Information resulting in piling operations not commencing as scheduled. The piling operation is on the critical path of the programme.
The contractor did upon encountering this issue notify the PM with an early warning notification and subsequently issued a notification of a compensation event.
In light of this event not being considered on the programme can the the PM reject the programme submitted on the 11 March, based upon progress up until the 28 February and ask the contractor to resubmit to factor in the impact of the delay encountered.
It all depends on the “data date” of the programme, i.e. the date they have rescheduled the programme to. If they have issued the programme on the 11th March but it was for progress up until the data date of the 28th Feb then that is what you should be assessing. At that point in time (i.e. 28th Feb) was that a reasonable forecast of everything they had done up until that date, and a reasonable forecast of everything going forward at the point of the 28th Feb? Anything after that data date will be picked up in the next programme which will be for the period following 28th Feb. You would have to assess against the four reasons of clause 31.3 if there is a reason to reject that programme. Having said that – it is very lazy for them to submit a programme on the 11th March that is not showing the progress and the knock on affect of everything that has happened in the preceding two weeks.
Project Manager can instruct a revised programme at any stage, but the Contractor has the “period of reply” (as stated in CD1) in which to issue the programme.