NEC ECC: Subcontracting - clause 26.3

NEC3 and NEC4 Contracts General
1

What is meant by:
The Contractor does not appoint a Subcontractor on the proposed subcontract
conditions submitted until the Project Manager has accepted them. A reason for
not accepting them is that
• they will not allow the Contractor to Provide the Works in accordance with the Works Information

What would be meant by the subcontractor not allowing the Contractor to Provide the Works?

2

As an example, let us say that the main Contractor wants to appoint an M&E Subcontractor on non-NEC terms for a building where M&E accounts for 40% of the contract costs.

How can the main Contractor comply with their main contract i.e. Provide the Works, if the subcontract conditions don’t contain similar requirements to early warn, submit programmes to the same level of detail, notify claims / he’s within timescales, substantially different risk allocation etc. ?

3

Other reasons they could be rejected could be that

  1. the works are specialist and the subcontractor proposed is not an obvious specialist in this works,
  2. a quick financial check on the Subcontractor suggests that they are at risk of going bankrupt
  3. the Employer has first hand experience of them and they have had numerous quality issues and major health and safety breaches,

all of which would mean the Contractor could not provide the works in accordance with the Works Information.

4

Working in the highways sector, the most frequent situation in which this clause applies is that the Specification for Highway Works requires certain types of work to be carried out by organisations and/or individuals that are accredited under the National Highway Sector Scheme. If the proposed Subcontractor doesn’t hold such certification, then the works could not be provided in accordance with the Works Information.

I’m sure similar situations arise in other sectors.