NEC3 ECC: Can you request an early warning meeting, as per clause 16.2, in the body of the early warning notice which you have served under clause 16.1?

Can you request an early warning meeting as per clause 16.2 in the body of the early warning notice which you have served under clause 16.1 ?

This seems to happen a lot, but clause 13.7 says that:

“A notification which this contract requires is communicated separately from other communications”.

Shouldn’t the request for an early warning meeting and the issue of an early warning notice therefore be communicated separately?

Here is an example of where 13.7 can be taken FAR too literally. It is there for good reason - don’t give four separate early warnings or instructions on the same piece of paper that could/need to be answered/treated differently.

In the early warning pro-forms that I would recommend - I have a prompt that goes on to say “Is a risk reduction meeting required - Y/N?”. If the answer is yes, it goes on to say who needs to attend, where and when it should be carried out.

I see no purpose what so ever to separate out these as two pieces of paper and do not see this as being contrary to the contract.

I agree that there is not being much point in following 13.7 when it comes to separating out 16.1 and 16.2, but the contract is still the the contract (and 10.1 is still 10.1)

Do you mean that following the spirit rather than the letter is acceptable here because everybody does it and so we will probably get away with it?

Also (on a related matter) it would seem sensible for a PM to ask for a quote for a compensation event at the same time that you notify it, but nobody seems to do that. What’s the difference?

Thanks very much for your help, by the way. I’m a student, and none of the books says anything on this apart from “follow the contract or your doomed”.

You are right - the contract is the contract BUT there is a degree of pragmatism and practicality that needs to be applied. For example - if you wanted to notify 300 defects, would you notify these individually on 300 separate pieces of paper taking 13.7 literally? I hope the answer is “no - of course not”. You would notify - “please find attached list of 300 defects that needs correcting”.

Equally sensible would be when a PM is giving an instruction that is a change to the Works Information they could/should state this is a compensation event and request a quotation. Some people have stated that should be THREE bits of separate paper to comply with 13.7 which would serve no benefit to either party other than to slow down the process and confuse.

13.7 was written to stop the likes of minutes of meetings becoming a contract document. If an instruction or a notification is buried somewhere in a set of minutes from a meeting then contractually that does not exist in accordance with 13.7 - and rightly so.