Completion
Completion, certificates and liquidated damages
Practical completion is a certificate, not a state of the site. On the date it carries, five things change at once, and QScope changes all five from the one entry.
QScope Team·6 min read
Issue the certificate
- Open Completion and add a certificate.
- Choose the type: practical completion, partial possession, non-completion, making good, or final certificate.
- Enter the date certified and the certificate number.
- Print it. It comes out as a formal document with the clause reference and what it triggers.
The certificate governs, not the settings field. If a practical completion certificate is on the register, its date drives the retention and the damages calculation. If the settings field says something different, QScope tells you and applies the certificate, because that is the document the contractor received.
Sections
Use sections only where the contract divides the works into them. Leave the register empty and the whole of the works is treated as one completion.
- Add each section with its value, contract completion date and damages rate.
- Enter its own practical completion date when it is certified.
- Enter the end of its own rectification period.
Half the retention attributable to a section is released at that section’s practical completion, the rest at the end of its own rectification period. The section values have to reconcile to the contract sum, and QScope warns you when they do not.
Partial possession
Where the employer takes part of the works early and the contract did not provide for sections, use a partial possession certificate.
- Add a partial possession certificate and enter the value of the part taken.
- Enter the end of the rectification period for that part.
Retention on that value is released as if the part had reached practical completion, and liquidated damages reduce in the same proportion from the date of possession forward. Days before possession still accrue at the full rate.
Liquidated damages, in the right order
The calculation takes a minute. The procedure is where the money goes.
- Settle any outstanding extension of time first, so the completion date is right.
- Issue a certificate of non-completion.
- The employer gives notice of intention to deduct.
- Only then deduct, in the payment notice, showing the calculation.
QScope will not let the damages figure stand unqualified while no certificate of non-completion is on the register. Under a JCT form a deduction made without it is ineffective and the whole sum is repayable, however clear the delay was.
On a FIDIC contract
QScope offers a FIDIC contract form alongside the UK forms. The milestones are the same five, under different names.
- Set the contract form to FIDIC and the jurisdiction in settings.
- Add a Taking-Over Certificate in place of practical completion, with the date certified.
- The Defects Notification Period runs from that date, counted in calendar days.
- Issue the Performance Certificate at the end of the period to release the second half of the retention.
Practical completion maps to the Taking-Over Certificate, the rectification period to the Defects Notification Period, and the certificate of making good to the Performance Certificate. Delay damages run to the Taking-Over date. The statutory dates and taxes shown for each jurisdiction are published starting points that need local verification.