Yesterday I along with a few hundred others attended the official launch of NEC4. This is a very welcome development as like anything NEC needs to keep pace with new ideas or better ways of doing things. NEC4 brings some great new changes, pondering over others, but most importantly from my perspective frustrated that one of the biggest industry issues has not obviously been addressed. This is my “elephant in the room”.
The issue is around how you assess a compensation event against an Accepted Programme – what contractually should you be taking into account. In my experience It is a major area of debates and arguments. Quite often the latest Accepted Programme could be several weeks (or even months) old and the question arises as to how you should assess a compensation event against that programme. Are you allowed to take into account progress? What if there have been other implemented compensation events since that last Accepted Programme, can you take into account those although they are not in it? The answer to both of these questions on a moral/practical basis has to be yes, but we then need the evidence as to where does the contract say you can do that. There are clauses if you dig deep that imply that is what you have to do – but why cant the contract give the clarity and clear understanding that in the most part we have through out the rest of the contract(s)?
Please review my full article below and send me any comments accordingly. I am not on a crusade to have my specific wording or proposal adopted – I just want us to be able to get to a clear set of words in the contract and much better guidance as to how to deal with multiple compensation events against outdated Accepted Programmes. Together as a community hopefully we can agree these words and provide collective guidance accordingly.