JCT vs NEC notices: which late notice actually costs you
By Roman Bazelchuk | NEC Accredited Project Manager | APMG Project Planning and Control
Founder, NEC Planning Solutions Ltd
JCT runs two notices because it keeps two lists. The extension of time notice is not a condition precedent, and a late one rarely costs the time. The loss and expense notice has been held to be one, and a late one costs the money. NEC runs a single notice that bars both.
Every contractor arriving on NEC has heard the same thing. NEC is strict about notices and JCT is relaxed. It is the most repeated piece of advice in the transition, and it is half wrong in the half that costs money.
The relaxed reputation is earned on one side of the JCT ledger and not the other. JCT keeps time and money on separate lists, and it treats the notices for them entirely differently. One is a procedural step with no sanction attached. The other has been held by a court to be a condition of being paid at all. Teams carry the reputation across without noticing which half of it they are relying on.
The four things that change at once on the move between forms are set out in the guide to what actually changes when a contractor moves from JCT to NEC. Why JCT splits entitlement into two lists in the first place is covered in Relevant Events and compensation events. How the NEC clock itself runs, and what clauses 61 and 62 require of both parties, belongs to the guide to the compensation event time bar. This article takes the question none of them answers: which late notice actually costs a contractor something, and on which contract.
The short version is that JCT has two notices because it has two lists, and NEC has one notice because it has one list. Everything operational follows from that.
The JCT time notice, and why it forgives
Under JCT Design and Build the contractor gives notice once it becomes reasonably apparent that the works are, or are likely to be, delayed, identifying the cause and the Relevant Event relied on. Particulars of the expected effects follow, with an estimate of the effect on the Completion Date, and material changes are notified as they arise.
The 2024 edition tightened the choreography without adding teeth. The employer now has fourteen days to request further information reasonably necessary to reach a decision, and eight weeks to give that decision, down from twelve. What the 2024 edition did not do is make the notice a condition precedent. JCT has said so itself: the timetable carries no express consequence for missing it.
So a contractor that notifies late on JCT is in a weaker evidential position and an awkward conversation, but its entitlement to time survives. That is the origin of the relaxed reputation, and inside its own boundary the reputation is accurate.
The JCT money notice, and why it does not
The boundary is the money. In FES Ltd v HFD Construction Group Ltd, a fit-out contractor delayed by the pandemic kept the argument about its extension of time. What it lost was the loss and expense that should have travelled with it, because it had not given the notice the contract required.
The reasoning turned on four words. Entitlement to loss and expense was expressed as subject to compliance with the notice clause, and the judge held it difficult to construe that as anything other than a condition of entitlement. It made no difference that the clause did not spell out the consequence of failing to comply, nor that a member of the JCT drafting committee had said the wording was never intended to create one. The Scottish appeal court upheld the decision, and the wording came unaltered from the Standard Building Contract, so it is the same wording contractors in England and Wales are working to.
The practical result is a split that catches people out. A contractor can notify late, keep its extension of time, and lose the prolongation cost the extension was supposed to carry. It wins the argument and pays for the delay.
JCT vs NEC notices: one clock instead of two
NEC does not have this problem, because it never created the conditions for it.
One notice, because there is one list
A compensation event notification is a single act that puts both limbs of entitlement in play. There is no separate money notice because there is no separate money list. Clause 60.1 carries one set of events, and the quotation that follows changes the Prices and the Completion Date together. A JCT team hunting for the NEC equivalent of the loss and expense notice will not find one, and should stop looking rather than assume it has been missed.
The deadline is harder and the map is simpler
What NEC gives instead is a single hard limit. Eight weeks from becoming aware of the event, with awareness measured by what the contractor ought to have known rather than what it says it knew. Miss it and both limbs go together. The mechanics of that clock sit in the time bar guide. What matters for the comparison is that there is one date to diarise rather than two, and no possibility of holding one and losing the other.
The notice is doing a different job
JCT vs NEC notices. This is the part that changes behaviour rather than paperwork. A JCT notice preserves a claim that will be proved later, once the delay has been felt and the records assembled. An NEC notification starts a process that produces a priced quotation within weeks, before the effect is fully known. The first rewards waiting until the position is clear. The second punishes it. A team that notifies on NEC with the thoroughness it learned on JCT will be accurate and late.
The two regimes are easier to see side by side than to hold in the head.
What actually changes in the diary
Three habits have to move, and none of them is about drafting. Where a team is on its first NEC job, compensation event support is usually quicker than learning them the expensive way.
The first is timing. On JCT the notice goes when the position is understood. On NEC it goes when the event is noticed, on whatever is known at the time. Thin and early beats complete and late, because a notification can be supplemented and a barred event cannot be revived.
The second is ownership. On JCT the notice is a commercial act, drafted by the quantity surveyor with the eventual claim in mind. On NEC it is closer to a site act, because the eight weeks run from awareness anywhere in the contractor's organisation and not from the moment the commercial team is told. A site manager who spots the event and says nothing for a month has spent a month of the clock.
The third has no JCT equivalent at all. A failure to give an early warning that an experienced contractor would have given does not extinguish entitlement under NEC, but clause 63.7 requires the event to be assessed as if the warning had been given, which reduces it. A contractor can notify comfortably inside eight weeks, keep its entitlement in principle, and still be assessed against a version of events in which it behaved better.
Summary
The reputation is not so much wrong as incomplete. JCT does forgive a late time notice and it does not forgive a late money notice, and the reason is structural rather than accidental. Two lists need two notices, and a contract with two notices will end up treating them differently. NEC has one list, one notification and one deadline, which is harsher at the point of failure and considerably simpler to administer.
For a team making the move, the useful reframing is that NEC has not bolted a notice regime on top of the one they already know. It has collapsed two into one and put a hard edge on it. What that discipline looks like across a full delivery is set out in the NEC3 gas infrastructure case study. The diary gets shorter. The cost of missing what is on it gets larger. The same holds for the payment calendar, where NEC assessment dates arrive whether or not an application has been made.
Frequently asked questions
Is the JCT extension of time notice a condition precedent?
No. Neither the 2016 nor the 2024 Design and Build editions make it one. The 2024 edition added a timetable, giving the employer fourteen days to request further particulars and eight weeks to decide, but attached no express consequence to a late contractor notice. Entitlement to time survives a late notice, though the evidential position weakens.
What did FES Ltd v HFD Construction Group Ltd decide?
That the JCT loss and expense notice provisions operate as a condition precedent. Entitlement was expressed as subject to compliance with the notice clause, and the court held that wording created a condition of entitlement. The Scottish appeal court upheld it, and the same wording appears in the JCT Standard Building Contract used in England and Wales.
Does NEC have a separate notice for money?
No, and looking for one is a common error on a first NEC job. A compensation event notification puts time and money in play together, because NEC keeps a single list of events at clause 60.1 and produces a single assessment. There is no second notice to miss, and no way to preserve one limb while losing the other.
How long does a contractor have to notify a compensation event?
Eight weeks from becoming aware of the event, under clause 61.3. Awareness is judged by what the contractor ought to have known rather than what it says it knew, so the clock can be running before the commercial team hears about the event. The detailed mechanics sit in the compensation event time bar guide.
Does a late early warning bar a compensation event?
No, but it reduces what the event is worth. Where the project manager decides an experienced contractor would have given an early warning and none was given, clause 63.7 requires the event to be assessed as if the warning had been given. The entitlement survives and the value does not.
About the author
Roman Bazelchuk is the Founder of NEC Planning Solutions Ltd, a UK project planning and controls consultancy supporting contractors with NEC programme compliance, compensation event assessments and live project controls. He is an NEC Accredited Project Manager and holds the APMG Project Planning and Control qualification, with a BEng in Mechanical Engineering and postgraduate training in Planning and Control.
NEC Planning Solutions provides contract-aware planning support through a QA-governed delivery model, helping project teams keep programmes accepted, current and commercially useful from tender through to live delivery.
Notifying late, or notifying everything?
Both failure modes cost money on NEC. Late notification bars the event outright, and blanket notification of everything that moves buries the ones that matter and exhausts the project manager's goodwill before the significant event arrives. Specialist compensation event support sets the threshold and the routine so the clock is never the reason a claim fails.
