Under NEC4 clause 31.3 the Project Manager has two weeks to accept a programme or state reasons for not accepting it. Miss that window and the programme is treated as accepted. State a reason that does not sit within clause 31.3 and the rejection is exposed.
The NEC4 Programme Acceptance Review is a fixed scope, independent assessment of a programme against the four grounds in clause 31.3 and the content requirements of clause 31.2, delivered inside the reply period with a written recommendation and the reasons that support it.
Who it is for
Clients, project managers and their advisers who receive contractor programmes and have to accept or reject them on a defensible basis, inside a two week reply period, often without an in-house planner.
Contractors and subcontractors who want a programme tested before submission, so that it is accepted first time rather than rejected and resubmitted, and so that the Accepted Programme they will later assess compensation events against is one they can actually rely on.
What the review covers
Every element the contract requires, checked against clause 31.2 rather than against general good practice:
- The starting date, access dates, Key Dates, Sectional Completion dates and Completion Date, and whether the programme is consistent with them
- Planned Completion, and the float shown between planned Completion and the Completion Date
- Total float, terminal float and time risk allowance, shown separately as the contract requires rather than hidden inside durations
- The order and timing of the operations the Contractor plans to do, and of the work of the Client and Others
- Provisions for float, time risk allowance, health and safety requirements and the procedures set out in the contract
- Statements of how the Contractor plans to do the work, and the resources assumed
- Logic, critical path and sequencing, including open ends, negative lag, constraints and out of sequence progress
- Consistency between the narrative, the programme and the contract documents
What you receive
A written report stating, for each ground in clause 31.3, whether the programme complies and why. Where it does not, the report states the reason in language that can be used directly in a notice of non acceptance.
Where the recommendation is acceptance, the report records the basis of that recommendation, which matters later when the Accepted Programme becomes the baseline against which every compensation event is assessed.
A marked up schedule of findings ranked by significance, so that the issues that would change the outcome are separated from the ones that are merely untidy.
How we work
Desktop review of the programme file, the narrative and the relevant contract documents. Where progress is claimed and the engagement allows for it, we verify progress on site rather than accepting the update, because a programme reporting progress that has not happened understates delay and corrupts every later assessment against the Accepted Programme.
Delivery is inside the reply period. Our standard turnaround and the terms that sit behind it are published at How We Work.