NEC Programme Not Accepted: The Clause 31.3 Response Playbook
Updated: 15 hours ago
By Roman Bazelchuk | NEC Accredited Project Manager | APMG Project Planning and Control
Founder, NEC Planning Solutions Ltd
When an NEC programme is not accepted, the Project Manager must give one of the four reasons in Clause 31.3 with enough detail to correct it. The submitted programme does not become the Accepted Programme, the previous one stays in force, and the contractor's job is to correct or contest quickly, because drifting hands control of time and money to the other side.
The notice usually lands on a Friday. The programme you submitted two weeks ago has come back not accepted, there is a list of reasons of varying quality attached, and the question in the room is the same on every project: what do we actually do now.
This is the playbook for that moment. Not the guide to getting a programme accepted in the first place, which is covered in full in the Clause 31 programme acceptance guide, but the response when acceptance has been refused: what the notice must contain, which reasons are legitimate, how to correct or contest, and what it costs to let the situation drift.
The stakes are not administrative. The Accepted Programme is the baseline every compensation event, every delay assessment and every payment conversation stands on. A contractor working without a current one is a contractor whose entitlement is being measured against a document that no longer describes the job, and the recent High Court ruling in Premier Modular v Maidstone showed exactly how expensive that can become: a £1.65m award refused enforcement because the whole dispute turned on which programme the contract actually recognised.
What an NEC programme not accepted notice actually changes
A non-acceptance changes the status of one document and nothing else. The submitted programme does not become the Accepted Programme. The previous Accepted Programme, if there is one, remains the Accepted Programme, however stale it has grown. The works carry on, because under Clause 14.1 acceptance of a communication does not change the Contractor's responsibility to Provide the Works, and no one downs tools because a programme bounced.
What it also does not do is relieve either side of the cycle. The Contractor's obligation to submit revised programmes at the intervals in the Contract Data, under Clause 32.2, keeps running. A non-acceptance is not a pause button on programme management. It is a defect notice on one submission, and the contract expects the defect corrected and the document back in front of the Project Manager.
The real change a non-acceptance makes is to risk. Every week the baseline stays frozen, the gap between the contract's picture of the job and the actual job widens, and everything that has to be proved against that baseline gets harder to prove. Which is why the response matters more than the notice.
The four reasons in Clause 31.3
Clause 31.3 gives the Project Manager exactly four grounds for not accepting a programme: the Contractor's plans it shows are not practicable, it does not show the information the contract requires, it does not represent the Contractor's plans realistically, or it does not comply with the Scope. There is no fifth. A Project Manager who withholds acceptance for a reason outside that list has triggered a compensation event under Clause 60.1(9), which exists precisely to stop acceptance being used as commercial pressure.
The notice also has a quality standard of its own. Under Clause 13.4, a reply of non-acceptance must state reasons in sufficient detail to enable the Contractor to correct the matter. "The logic needs work" is not sufficient detail. "Activities 240 to 310 carry no predecessors and the commissioning chain does not link to Completion" is. A vague notice is not just unhelpful, it is itself short of what the contract requires, and naming that, politely and in writing, is often the fastest way to turn a stand-off into a punch list.
Read as a diagnostic, the four reasons sort into two families. Not practicable and not realistic are judgement reasons: the Project Manager is saying the plan itself does not hold, durations too thin, sequences that cannot be built, progress overstated. Missing information and Scope non-compliance are checklist reasons: something Clause 31.2 or the Scope demands is simply not there, a missing Key Date, absent time risk allowances, the wrong software or reporting form. Checklist reasons are corrected mechanically. Judgement reasons need engagement, because you are not fixing a field, you are changing the Project Manager's mind or your plan.
The response playbook
The playbook has four moves, and the first one happens before anyone opens Primavera.
Triage the notice
Take each stated reason and put it in one of three boxes: right, wrong, or unclear. Right means the criticism stands and the fix goes in the next revision. Wrong means the reason is either factually mistaken or outside the four grounds, and it will be contested. Unclear means the notice fails the Clause 13.4 detail test, and the reply asks for the specifics needed to correct it. Most notices are a mix, and treating the whole thing as an insult or as gospel are both errors. The triage takes an hour and sets the strategy for everything after.
Correct what is right
For the checklist reasons, fix exactly what was named and log each fix against the reason it answers, so the resubmission carries its own audit trail. For the judgement reasons, the correction is usually less about surgery on the file and more about evidence: the durations challenged as optimistic get their basis shown, the sequence challenged as impracticable gets a method note, the progress challenged as unrealistic gets reconciled to the site records. A resubmission that answers every stated reason, point by point, is very hard to refuse twice, and a covering note that maps each change to each reason makes the Project Manager's acceptance decision a five-minute job instead of a review from scratch.
Contest what is wrong, in the contract's language
Where a reason sits outside the four grounds, say so and cite Clause 60.1(9), because withholding acceptance for a non-contractual reason is a compensation event, not a negotiating position. Where a reason is inside the grounds but factually wrong, answer it with evidence rather than adjectives. And where the dispute will not resolve at project level, the senior representatives and adjudication routes under the W clauses exist, though on most jobs the credible, documented threat of the compensation event is enough to bring the conversation back to the four reasons.
Resubmit on the clock, and use the silence rule if you get silence
The corrected programme goes back in promptly, not at the next monthly interval, because every week without a current baseline is a week of accumulating risk. On resubmission, the Project Manager again has two weeks to respond. If nothing comes back, NEC4 gives the Contractor a tool NEC3 never did: notify the failure to respond, and if the silence continues for a further week, the programme is treated as accepted. The mechanism is not automatic, it runs only if the Contractor sends that notification, and the detail of how it operates sits in the Clause 31 guide. The point for the playbook is simpler: silence is not a dead end, it is a route to acceptance for a contractor who knows the mechanism and uses it.
The cost of drifting
Every consequence of a stale baseline lands on the contractor's side of the table, and they compound.
The sharpest is compensation events. Under Clause 64.2, where there is no Accepted Programme, or the Contractor has not submitted programmes or revisions as the contract requires, the Project Manager assesses compensation events using their own assessment of the programme. That is the contractor losing control of the modelling on every live event at once, and a Project Manager's own assessment is rarely the generous reading. What that looks like in practice, and how quickly it erodes entitlement, is set out in what happens to compensation events without an accepted programme. The money limb suffers with the time limb, because a compensation event quotation is priced off the same baseline that proves its delay.
On a first programme the contract adds a cash penalty. Where no programme is identified in the Contract Data, Clause 50.5 retains one quarter of the Price for Work Done to Date until a first programme showing the required information is submitted. A quarter of every assessment, held against a document the contractor simply has not produced, is the contract saying how seriously it takes the baseline.
And beneath both sits the Premier Modular lesson: when the dispute eventually comes, the tribunal reaches for the programme the contract recognises. If that programme was last accepted months or years ago, the dates the claim depends on may simply not be in it, and entitlement that was real on site becomes unprovable on paper.
There is a client-side reading of the same clock, and it deserves a paragraph because it is true. A Project Manager who rejects cleanly, four reasons, sufficient detail, on time, is protecting the client, because a definite baseline serves whoever is paying just as much as whoever is building. The rejections that damage projects are the vague ones and the late ones, which manufacture exactly the ambiguity that ends up in front of an adjudicator.
The Accepted Programme Test
At NEC Planning Solutions every programme that touches a live entitlement is put through the same three questions before anyone relies on it, and the test is worth adopting whether or not we are in the room.
Does the contract recognise it: has this programme actually been accepted under Clause 31 or 32, or deemed accepted through the notified-failure route, rather than merely issued, updated or worked to on site. Does it carry what the contract requires: the Clause 31.2 information, the Key Dates, the terminal float and time risk allowances, shown rather than implied. And would it survive an event built on it: if the next compensation event had to be modelled from this baseline tomorrow, do the dates and logic it contains prove the case or undermine it.
A programme that passes all three is an asset. A programme that fails any one of them is a liability wearing an asset's file name, and the whole discipline of responding fast to a non-acceptance exists to keep the answer at three yeses.
The practitioner view
Most non-acceptances I see are self-inflicted, and I mean that as encouragement rather than blame. Programmes get submitted to meet the calendar, because the interval in the Contract Data has come round, rather than built to be accepted, and the Project Manager's notice then reads as a surprise when it is really a receipt. The useful reframe is this: a first non-acceptance with proper reasons is free consultancy. The other side has told you, in writing, exactly what the next submission has to contain.
The contractors who suffer are not the ones who get a programme bounced once, it is the ones who let the correction cycle run three and four rounds while the baseline ages, the compensation events stack up against Clause 64.2, and the job quietly outgrows the last document the contract recognises. Respond inside a week, answer every reason on its own terms, and put the clock to work for you rather than against you. The notice is not the problem. The drift is.
Summary
A non-acceptance changes the status of one document, not the state of the job. Clause 31.3 permits exactly four reasons, and Clause 13.4 requires each to be stated in enough detail to correct. The response is a triage into right, wrong and unclear, a correction that answers every stated reason on its own terms, a contest of anything outside the four grounds under Clause 60.1(9), and a prompt resubmission that puts the two-week response clock and the deemed acceptance route to work.
The cost of getting this wrong is not administrative. Under Clause 64.2 a contractor without a current Accepted Programme hands the Project Manager the assessment of every live compensation event, Clause 50.5 retains a quarter of the payment where no first programme has been submitted, and a stale baseline leaves genuine entitlement unprovable when a dispute arrives. Respond inside a week and the notice costs nothing. Let it drift and it costs the baseline.
How NEC Planning Solutions helps
NEC Planning Solutions Ltd is a UK-registered project controls consultancy, director-led and QA-governed, with senior NEC-accredited review on every output. On acceptance problems the work runs both ways: Clause 31 and 32 programme compliance, building submissions that pass first time, and programme review and recovery when the cycle has already broken, the reasons keep coming back, or the baseline has been stale long enough to threaten live entitlement.
The same discipline runs on our own delivery, most recently on a live carbon capture project, where the programme cycle is treated as the commercial protection it is.
Download the Non-Acceptance Response Checklist
The triage and resubmission gate from this playbook in two pages: the four reasons as a diagnostic, the correct-or-contest decision, and the checks to clear before the next revision goes in. Free, direct download, no sign-up.
Frequently asked questions
Can the Project Manager reject my programme for any reason?
No. Clause 31.3 limits non-acceptance to four grounds: plans not practicable, required information not shown, plans not represented realistically, or non-compliance with the Scope. Withholding acceptance for any other reason is a compensation event under Clause 60.1(9), and the reasons given must be detailed enough under Clause 13.4 for the Contractor to correct them.
What happens if the Project Manager does not respond at all?
Under NEC4, silence has a remedy. The Project Manager has two weeks to accept or give reasons. If nothing arrives, the Contractor may notify that failure, and if the silence continues for a further week after the notification, the programme is treated as accepted. The mechanism only runs if the Contractor sends the notification, so it rewards contractors who track the clock.
Does a non-acceptance mean we stop work or stop submitting?
Neither. The works continue, because acceptance of a communication does not change the Contractor's responsibility to Provide the Works, and the Clause 32.2 cycle of revised programmes keeps running through any dispute about one submission. A non-acceptance affects the status of a single document. Treating it as a reason to pause programme management multiplies its cost.
Is a rejected programme still used for compensation events?
No, and this is the real danger. Compensation events are assessed against the Accepted Programme, so a rejected submission has no status and the previous accepted baseline, however old, remains the reference. Where no accepted programme exists or revisions have not been submitted as required, Clause 64.2 lets the Project Manager assess events using their own view of the programme.
What is the deadline for the Project Manager to respond to a programme?
Two weeks from submission under Clause 31.3 of NEC4 and NEC3. NEC4 then adds the notified-failure route: the Contractor notifies the lack of response, and a further week of silence means the programme is treated as accepted. NEC3 has no deemed acceptance mechanism, so on an NEC3 job the remedy is a compensation event rather than acceptance.
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.
Will your next submission be accepted?
If a programme has come back not accepted, or the acceptance cycle on your job has been drifting, NEC Planning Solutions will review the submission against the four Clause 31.3 reasons and the Clause 31.2 information requirements, and tell you plainly what the next revision needs before it goes in.
