NEC ECC: Project Manager making unreasonable assessments of compensation events!

We are a contractor, with a NEC 3 contract with a multitude of CE’s.

Our quotations are based on defined activities, the amount of time against each activity and the amount of hours x a rate to build up the quotation.

The employer/PM has assessed every single CE (no notification, just a returned assessment in response to ours)

Every assessment drastically reduces the amount of hours against each activity, with no explanation/reasoning - drastically and unreasonably reducing the fee for each particular CE to suit their ideal fee.

I feel they are being very unreasonable, but can’t find any guidance in the NEC3 guides on what to do in this situation. It seems to be the case that we have to just accept the reduced quote, proceed with the work regardless and take the loss.

Is adjudication the only option?
Is there anything different we should be doing going forward?

If you believe the PMs assessments truly are unreasonable then yes you should adjudicate, particularly if there is a common theme arising in terms of differences in opinion about how events should be assessed.

Do you understand why the PM’s assessments differ from yours? Are your quotations being prepared in accordance with the contract? Have you tried speaking to the PM about this? Try thinking about each of these questions prior to adjudicating as you may find it’s your understanding of the contract that’s at fault and not the PM.