Veystrum › Guides › Extension of time
Extension of time: the notice that has to go in before anybody knows the answer
An extension of time is not a claim for money and it is not an admission of fault. It is the mechanism that keeps a completion date achievable and, in most standard forms, the only thing that stops liquidated damages running. The part that gets lost is that the notice is due long before the analysis is possible.
Nothing in English law entitles a contractor to more time. The entitlement comes from the contract, and so do the conditions attached to it. Two families of form dominate UK construction and they behave differently enough that advice about one is misleading about the other.
What the clause is actually protecting
Without an extension mechanism, an employer who causes delay would still be entitled to liquidated damages from the original completion date — and because they caused the delay, they could not be, so time would be "at large" and damages would have to be proved at general law. The extension clause exists as much to preserve the employer's remedy as to give the contractor relief. That is why it has conditions, and why the conditions are enforced.
The notice, and why it comes first
| Form | What is owed, and when |
|---|---|
| JCT | Notice forthwith when it becomes reasonably apparent that progress is being or is likely to be delayed, identifying the cause and the expected effect. Particulars and an estimate follow. |
| NEC | An early warning as soon as either party becomes aware of a matter that could affect time, cost or quality; then notification of a compensation event, subject to a time bar measured in weeks from becoming aware of it. |
The notice is owed when the delay becomes apparent, not when its effect is known. A contractor who waits until they can prove the number has, in some forms, already lost the entitlement to argue about it.
Whether a notice provision is a condition precedent — so that missing it destroys the entitlement — depends on whether the contract says so clearly. NEC's time bar is drafted to be one. JCT's notice is generally not, though late notice can still reduce what is awarded, because the assessor is entitled to consider what could have been mitigated had they been told.
Time and money are separate questions
An extension of time moves the completion date. It does not, by itself, pay for anything. Money for the period of delay comes from a different route — loss and expense under JCT, or the assessment of a compensation event under NEC — and the two do not automatically follow each other. It is entirely possible to be granted time and recover nothing, and that is not a drafting accident.
Prolongation is the cost of being on site longer: site establishment, supervision, plant on hire, insurances. It is assessed over the period the delay actually occurred, not over the extension granted at the end. That distinction matters when rates changed in between.
Concurrent delay
Where an employer-risk event and a contractor-risk event cause delay over the same period, the position is contested and jurisdictionally split. The approach usually followed in England — after Malmaison — gives the contractor the extension of time while denying the associated cost. The Scottish decision in City Inn favoured apportionment. Contracts increasingly say which answer they want, and where one does, it governs.
Proving it
Delay analysis methods differ in what they assume and what they need:
- As-planned impacted adds the delay events to the baseline programme. Cheap, and criticised for ignoring what actually happened.
- Time impact analysis inserts each event into an updated programme at the point it occurred. Prospective, and the method most standard forms contemplate.
- As-built but-for and windows analyses work from what was actually built and are more defensible, and more expensive, and both require records that were kept at the time.
Float
Who owns float is a contract question and a frequent surprise. Under most standard forms float is not owned by either party: it is available to the project, and a delay that consumes float without moving completion generates no extension. Under NEC, terminal float and time risk allowance are treated distinctly, and a compensation event is assessed against the accepted programme including them.
How Veystrum handles it
Veystrum records a delay event against the date it became apparent, holds the notice requirement for that contract, and counts the window from the right day. An event whose notice is owed and not served appears on the exception report with the days remaining; one whose window has closed unserved stays there and says so, because the entitlement it may have cost is not recovered by the row disappearing.
It records which activities the event hit and the days lost on each, so the impact is attached to the programme rather than asserted about it — and it records the money separately from the time, because they are separate questions and a register that merges them cannot answer either.
The site diary is the evidence underneath all of it. That is why the diary is free of seat charges on every plan: a delay analysis is only as good as the record of who was on site on the day, and a product that charged per head would be charging for the thing the analysis depends on.