NEC3 - PSC - OPTION C - Time Verification Audit

NEC3 and NEC4 Contracts Payment
1

I am the Employer in the contract and I have undertaken an audit of the amount due, particularly the time charge element and I have uncovered the following;

  1. The consultant self approves their own timesheets - for clarity, the individual submitting time to be charged against the contract is the same individual that approves the time to be booked against the contract.
  2. The consultant has booked time against this contract and other contracts that is over and above their contracted hours. For clarity, the individuals are not entitled to overtime e.g The individual is contracted to work 8 hour days and they booked 8 hours to my contract and 4 hours to a different contract.
  3. We have limited information other than timehseets (self approved) to verify hours worked. They may alternative of mechanisms of verifying this i.e their tap in tap out card entries.

Please can you advice the permissibility on the above and any recourse we have as the client?

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2

Hi Alun, under the PSC the Time Charge does not represent actual cost it is simply defined as “the sum of the products of each of the staff rates multiplied by the total staff time appropriate to that rate properly spent on work in this contract” - see clause 11.2(13).
It is not effected by what the Consultant is paying their staff, they could all be working for free and it would make no difference provided the time is properly spent on work in the contract.
NEC3 is out of date and out of touch, you should use NEC4, it is far superior and the PSC now has Defined Cost and a Schedule of Cost Components.

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