An NEC4 job runs on short clocks. The Project Manager has 2 weeks to accept a programme or give reasons (31.3), and 1 week to reply to a compensation event notification (61.4). The Contractor has 3 weeks to submit a quotation (62.3). Notify an event more than 8 weeks after becoming aware of it and the Prices, the Completion Date and the Key Dates are not changed, unless the event came from a Project Manager or Supervisor instruction (61.3).
Those clocks don’t wait for a review meeting. Whoever runs the programme has to know the contract well enough to act inside them.
Where a junior-heavy model leaks
Large consultancies do good work. The risk sits in the hand-off: a partner wins the commission, a team builds the programme, and the person who knows the contract reads it at the end, if at all. The leaks we see most often:
- Revised programmes go in on time but stop showing what 32.1 asks for: actual progress, its effect on the remaining work, and how delays will be dealt with.
- Quotations arrive at week 3 without the alterations to the Accepted Programme that 62.2 requires. The Project Manager then makes its own assessment under 64.1, on its own view of the programme.
- Early warnings get missed. Where the Project Manager decides an experienced contractor could have warned of an event, it is assessed as if the warning had been given (61.5, 63.7).
The software is rarely the cause. Usually somebody didn’t read the clause at the moment it mattered.
What changes when the director does the work
- The person reading the contract is the person in P6. Method, logic and notices are decided once, by one head.
- One record from Rev 1 to the final account. When a compensation event is assessed against the Accepted Programme current at the dividing date (63.5), it is a programme the director built and knows.
- Answers in hours. A 1-week reply window leaves no room for a chain of approvals.
Where it shows most
Adjudication. The adjudicator has 28 days. The programme evidence that holds up is the record kept at the time, explained by the person who kept it. A team rebuilding someone else’s file to that timetable starts behind.
Talk it through with the director: info@vertxprojectcontrols.co.uk, or book a consultation.
More insights
- Ten Things That Blow a Hyperscale Data-Centre Programme
- Why Clause 31 Programmes Get Rejected, and How to Get Acceptance First Time
- How to Mitigate Risk in Large-Scale Projects: A Guide for Project Directors
- The Senior Practitioner’s Checklist: Safeguarding the Project Lifecycle
- Beyond the Dashboard: 5 Project Control Shifts Defining UK Infrastructure in 2026