Planning advice for contractors

NEC requires mitigation but cannot impose acceleration. Most contractors confuse the two. Contractors who mitigate when they should be quoting for acceleration give away recovery work the contract entitles them to be paid for. Contractors who refuse to mitigate lose entitlement because the assessment assumes they would have mitigated anyway. This is the practical guide to understanding where the line sits and how to protect the commercial position on both sides of it.

On NEC Options C and D, real cost can still become vulnerable when the accepted programme and the cost record stop telling the same story. This article looks at the hidden commercial fracture between planning and QS records, and why that is where Defined Cost recovery often starts to fail.

Clause 15 only works when early warnings trigger decisions and programme movement. Here’s a quantified register method and weekly rhythm you can run on real jobs.

A practical NEC3 vs NEC4 comparison focused on programme acceptance, treated acceptance, early warning discipline and CE integration, based on NEC’s “Next Generation” white paper.

Every subcontractor delay on an NEC4 project is two delays at once. The subcontract event runs on its own clock with its own notification requirements, evidence, and commercial outcomes. The head contract event runs on a parallel clock with its own clause 61.3 window, its own assessment, and its own clause 64 vulnerability. Most contractors run one of these processes diligently and the other partially or not at all.