Time, delay & completion

On many standard forms a deduction for lateness has a formal sequence in front of it: a certificate recording non-completion, notice of the intention to deduct, and on Act jobs a pay less notice with the sum and basis. A deduction that skipped a step fails on paper.

Splitting a job into sections with their own completion dates gives each phase its own damages, its own retention drop and its own defects clock. Powerful where the client genuinely takes over in phases, and pure administrative debt where they do not.

Snag lists never die of natural causes: they die when someone gives them a single owner, a fixed baseline, dates on both sides and a defined finish line. The four rules, and why the snag list at completion and the defects schedule a year later are different animals.

The employer can engage others and recover the cost, but only after giving the contractor the opportunity first. Skipping that caps the recovery.

Not software, not a Gantt chart with two hundred bars: a one-page list of stages with dates and the three dependencies that actually matter. What a written programme wins you in delay arguments, cash forecasting and client management, for an hour of work.

When the client causes delay and the contract has no working way to extend the date, the fixed completion date can fall away entirely: time is at large, and you owe completion in a reasonable time instead. It kills the delay damages, it is real law, and it almost never works.

Under JCT it usually is not, and that surprises both sides. Under NEC the Accepted Programme is central to how everything is assessed.

One is a commercial deal with a price attached. The other is a claim built on a refused extension, and it is a much harder argument.

The slack between when an activity can finish and when it must. Under most standard forms the answer is nobody, which satisfies neither side.

Half your retention, the end of delay damages and the start of the defects period all hang off one certificate nobody has issued. Why occupation is your strongest evidence, and the letter that turns living in the building into a completion date.

If the contract names a rate, yes: liquidated damages are the pre-agreed price of lateness, no proof of loss required. But the deduction has conditions, a certificate on some forms, a pay less notice on Act jobs, and an extension of time defeats it altogether.

Both let the employer occupy part of the works early. One is planned in the contract, the other is the mechanism for when it was not.

There is no statutory definition, and the arguments are rarely about the words anyway. Practical completion is the switch that releases half the retention, stops delay damages and starts the defects clock, which is why one side wants it certified now.

Between practical completion and the final retention release sits a period, usually six or twelve months, with one job: defects notified, defects made good, certificate issued, money released. Each step has an owner, and the money strands where a step has none.

QScope records practical completion as the milestone that releases retention, starts the rectification period and begins the run to the final account.

Concurrency is where an employer risk event and a contractor risk event both delay completion over the same period. The usual answer is time, without money.

QScope holds the notice, relevant event and programme impact together, so an extension of time claim rests on contemporaneous records under JCT and NEC4.

The last of your retention hangs on one document almost nobody asks for: the certificate of making good. The sequence that gets it issued while everyone still answers your emails, and the letter for when the defects are done and the silence starts.

A client who claims defects and refuses access is running the weakest version of their own claim. Why your right to return matters, what refusing it does to the money they can recover, and the two dated letters that put the refusal on the record.

Yes, if the delay is one your contract gives time for and you claim it properly. Why an extension of time is really a shield against delay damages, why the notice matters more than the argument, and why more time and more money are two separate claims.