QScope

Time

Recording and assessing extensions of time

The award is a number of weeks. What makes it defensible two years later is the sentence explaining how you got there, and that sentence is the thing nobody writes down.

QScope Team·5 min read

Log the event when the notice arrives

  1. Open Extensions of Time and add an event.
  2. Name the relevant event from the clause 2.29 list. Do it now, while the correspondence is fresh.
  3. Enter the date notice was received and the date particulars were received.
  4. Enter the weeks claimed.
The assessment clock runs from the particulars, not from the notice. A contractor who gives notice and never provides particulars has not started your clock.

Time and money are separate

A relevant event under clause 2.29 can carry an extension of time. A relevant matter under clause 4.21 can carry loss and expense. The lists overlap heavily and they are not the same.

QScope warns you when loss and expense is claimed against an event that cannot carry it. Exceptionally adverse weather is the clearest case: it is a relevant event and not a relevant matter, so it buys relief from damages and nothing else.

Record the assessment, not just the answer

  1. Enter the weeks awarded and the award date.
  2. Set the status to Awarded.
  3. Write the reasoning in the assessment field: which event, which period, what was on the critical path, what was allowed and what was not.
Only events marked as awarded move the revised completion date. A claim that has been notified but not decided extends nothing, and the original date stands until you decide.

What an award changes

The revised completion date moves. Liquidated damages then run from the new date, not the old one.

Any certificate of non-completion issued against the old date is cancelled and has to be reissued. QScope flags the damages calculation until it is.

Working under FIDIC

On a FIDIC job the relevant event becomes a ground for an Extension of Time for Completion under Sub-Clause 8.4 in the 1999 edition. The mechanics QScope holds are the same, dates, notice and assessment, but the notice is stricter and the clause numbering differs.

  1. Name the FIDIC ground under Sub-Clause 8.4 instead of the JCT relevant event.
  2. Enter the date the contractor became aware of the event, then the date notice was given.
  3. Log time and cost together under the Sub-Clause 20.1 claim, not as a separate loss and expense head.
Under Sub-Clause 20.1 the notice must be given within 28 days of awareness of the event, and in the 1999 edition it is a condition precedent. QScope counts in calendar days and flags a claim served late, because a strong claim can be lost on the date alone. The 28 and 56 day defaults are published starting points, editable for the Particular Conditions and to verify locally.

Keep reading

Related

Extensions of time Delay events with the relevant event or FIDIC ground named, weeks claimed against weeks awarded, the 28 day notice clock, and money-vs-time warnings. Read this next Files, plans and site photos Storing project documents, drawings and photographs against the job, and what to keep where. Read this next Building and agreeing the final account Every adjustment from the contract sum to the final balance, closing out under JCT or the FIDIC Final Statement and Final Payment Certificate, and signed off. Read this next