What NEC3 clause 16 and NEC4 clause 15 require you to early warn, how the register and meeting work, and how a missed warning reduces your compensation.
Under the NEC Engineering and Construction Contract, the Contractor and the Project Manager each have to tell the other about trouble early. An early warning is not a claim and it does not ask for money. It is a short notification that something could go wrong, given while there is still time to do something about it.
In NEC3 the duty sits in clause 16. In NEC4 it moved to clause 15. The trigger wording is very close in both, but the register and meeting arrangements changed. You can read more about the edition on our NEC3 page.
Clause 16.1 of NEC3 (April 2013) requires the Contractor and the Project Manager to give an early warning by notifying the other as soon as either becomes aware of any matter which could:
The test is "could", not "will". You do not need a cost figure or proof of delay before you warn. The 2013 edition also allows the Contractor to warn of any other matter which could increase its own total cost. NEC4 clause 15.1 keeps the same list.
A useful warning states what the matter is, when you became aware of it, what it could affect and what you propose. Send it as a separate notification to the Project Manager, not buried in a site diary or meeting minute; NEC treats notifications as communications that must be made separately from others.
NEC3: the Risk Register. The Risk Register holds the risks listed in the Contract Data plus every matter notified as an early warning. The Project Manager enters each early warning matter in it and issues it revised after each risk reduction meeting.
NEC4: the Early Warning Register. NEC4 renamed it and made it start earlier. The Project Manager issues the first Early Warning Register shortly after the starting date, containing the matters listed in the Contract Data, and adds each early warning as it is notified.
In both editions the register is a live document. Check each issue against your own records; a warning you gave that is missing from the register is worth raising at once.
NEC3: the risk reduction meeting (clauses 16.2 to 16.4). Either the Project Manager or the Contractor may instruct the other to attend. Those attending co-operate in making and considering proposals to avoid or reduce the effect of each registered risk, decide on actions and who takes them, and decide which risks have passed and can be removed. The Project Manager then revises the Risk Register and, if a decision needs a change to the Works Information, instructs it at the same time.
NEC4: the early warning meeting. The first meeting is held soon after the starting date, and further meetings follow at the intervals stated in the Contract Data. Either party can also instruct the other to attend an extra meeting. The purpose is the same as in NEC3.
Silence does not, on its own, remove your compensation event. It reduces it. When the Project Manager instructs you to submit a quotation, it may also notify its decision that you did not give an early warning which an experienced contractor could have given (clause 61.5 in both editions).
If it does, the event is assessed as if you had given the warning (clause 63.5 in NEC3, clause 63.7 in NEC4). In practice, cost or delay that a timely warning and a sensible response could have avoided is left out of the assessment. How much that is turns on the facts of each event.
The early warning is separate from the compensation event notification under clause 61.3, which carries its own eight-week time bar. You need both.
The numbers below use calendar weeks, which is how NEC3 counts. Public holidays do not stop the clock or extend it.
If you had stayed quiet for a month while pumping at your own pace, the Project Manager could notify that an experienced contractor would have warned. The quotation would then be assessed as if you had warned on 3 March, and the extra month of pumping that a warning might have avoided could fall away.
Missing the 61.3 time bar costs more: you lose any change to the Prices, the Completion Date or a Key Date for that event, unless it was one the Project Manager should have notified and did not.
Everything above describes the standard conditions. The signed contract governs: Z clauses, the Contract Data and the Works Information (Scope in NEC4) can change the periods, the meeting intervals and how notifications must be given. Some projects add Z clauses that shorten the eight-week period or tighten the early warning duty, so read Contract Data part one before relying on any date here. This guide is general information, not legal advice.
Sakhani reads your signed contract, including the Z clauses and Contract Data, and records the periods it actually sets. When an event is logged, it counts the weeks from the date you became aware, reminds the people responsible for the early warning and the 61.3 notification, and drafts both notices for a person on your team to check and send. See how it works.
See every NEC3 and NEC4 notice with its clause, period and addressee, or let Sakhani read your signed contract and keep the clocks for you.