NEC3 ECC: Contract period extended past Christmas holiday week

Contract completion date was end of November. Seven CE’s have been implemented with a total additional time effect of 5 weeks. A revised programme has been issued showing the completion date 6 weeks after the end of November due to the fact that the Contractor will be on one weeks holidays over Christmas. The PM deems this contractually unacceptable and wants 5 calendar week’s shown. Is the Contractor not being unfairly penalised due to the time of year completion happens to occur on?

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This should have already been taken into account when the CE’s were progressively being quoted/assessed. Each CE that affects the remaining works needs a programme to go with it. The CE that took it into the non-working Christmas week should have shown that it was (say) a 5 working day delay which equates to 12 calendar days due to the non-work period. Any additional cost (such as the site cabins being on site for an extra week even if no one is on site) should have been included within that quotation.

One factor that will may be change the argument is if you are choosing not to work, or actually Works information or other practicalities dictate that you cant work that week. If it is clearly a non-working period that everyone had agreed to then yes I would agree that the Completion Date should be on a working day - but again the programme should have demonstrated this so no one was under any illusions.