NEC ECC: The effect of events against planned Completion

The Contractor has submitted a clause 32 programme which has been accepted (Jan '18). This represents the latest Accepted Programme and the one that the effects of CE’s, progress and the Contractor’s own delays are shown. Two further months have gone by where the Employer has not accepted further revised programmes for a variety of reasons, so the latest accepted programme is still the one referred to above (Jan '18). However as time has gone by the Contractor has correctly shown against this programme the effects of delays that have since been judged to be the Employer’s liability amongst many other things. What we have, as you can see, is a programme that has a mix of all manner of delays etc in it.

The latest CE that is being assessed is for delays that occurred prior to the latest Accepted Programme but those effects have already/since been shown on the programme and accepted. Therefore the latest planned Completion already has the effects of the CE events included in it so how does the Contractor assess the effect of the CE alone against his latest accepted programme and show the effect on planned Completion when planned Completion already has some of the effects of the CE and other events included. You can see the circular problem!

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You are absolutely right and an issue I raised at the launch of NEC4 as the problem has not been addressed. All you can do, to make sense of the situation, is use the Accepted Programme current at the point in time immediately before the effects of the event started to impact the programme. That must, logically, be what is intended (although the contract will not take you there). You should then update the programme to the point of impact and consider the effect (again the contract doesn’t actually take you there).

This is a big problem area and if you have fallen into it you will need to get creative and find some advisers who can et n board with such a creative approach.

Rob, what about taking the Accepted Programme (in compliance with the contract) and de-updating (if there is such a word!) it back to the point in time immediately before the effects of the event started to impact. Would that approach comply with the contract.

Dave - you could try that approach but, in my experience, unpicking a programme is actually much harder and more controversial than updating and earlier programme particularly where there have been sequence changes or alterations in float or TRA.

Rob - I would tend to agree with you here. Whilst Dave’s comment is constructive it would mean significant work so what we are doing is basically taking a revised programme with the effects of the CE and treating that as underpinning to the consequence of the event. That programme could then, feasibly, be issued as a clause 32 update/revised programme. Creativity, as you mention, is key here. Many thanks for the responses.