NEC4 ECSC “short contract” Compensation Event Time

NEC3 and NEC4 Contracts
1

I am reaching out to seek some clarification regarding the submission of an updated programme under the NEC4 ECSC contract. As it stands there has not been a defined timescale for submitting an updated programme within the scope and it did not define the detail to which the programme was needed unlike the ECC. Given this situation, should the contractor be submitting an impacted programme to assess the change to the Completion Date?

At present, the contractor is merely indicating the timeframe as a number of weeks without providing any evidence or detailed explanation of how this time has been calculated. This lack of substantiation makes it challenging to accurately assess the impact on the Completion Date.

Could you please provide guidance on whether an impacted programme should be submitted in this scenario?

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For the NEC4 ‘short’ contracts a programme, or plan, is an optional requirement and they are submitted as ‘stated in the Scope’.

For a compensation event under the ECSC a delay to the Completion Date is assessed taking account of the effect of the compensation event. There is no Accepted Programme so the way in which this is assessed is not defined, although the general principles of NEC4 ECC clause 63.5 and Practice Note 1.1 are likely to ‘influence’ this.

A quotation should include an assessment of the effect of a delay to the Completion Date. Where it doesn’t then the Client would make an assessment.

You could always make an assumption about the period of delay that could be ‘corrected’ as a further compensation event, where this is causing a problem.

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