NEC ECC: covid-19 affect on notification periods

NEC3 and NEC4 Contracts Compensation Events
1

I am interested to know people’s opinion with regard to the effect of COVID-19 on notification periods that exist under the NEC4 contract.

The contract on the project in question is Option B. The effect of the COVID-19 lockdown was/ is that the government enacted legislation to cease all non-essential work. In the case of our contract work, stopped on site. Office work could have continued via working from home, so was the Contractor compelled to still meet the contractual requirements with regard to issuing notifications within the contract-specified period - eg. Cl.61.3 - or is the effect of a shutdown, enforced by legislative enactment, to place all such notification periods on standstill, until the lockdown is lifted?

2

Shutting down the site does not mean you do not still follow the contract in the background. You can still be notifying early warnings, notifying and assessing compensation events, updating programmes etc etc. All of that could and should be maintained remotely, unless there was a clear instruction to suspend everything, including administering the contractual processes (which is highly unlikely).