Contractors rarely lose entitlements because they are wrong about the contract. They lose them because they are late. The instruction, the delay or the unexpected ground condition was visible on site within hours, but the notice reached the client weeks later, after a time-bar had already run. Under NEC4 that window is eight weeks; under FIDIC it is 28 days.
Avoiding time-barred claims is less about knowing the clauses and more about information flow: making sure every event that might carry an entitlement reaches the person who writes notices while there is still time to act.
Who this is for: commercial managers, quantity surveyors and contract managers at contractors working under NEC4, FIDIC or JCT, who want fewer entitlements lost to late notice and a clearer picture of where notice events hide on their projects.
What a late notice really costs
Time-bars matter because the sums involved are large and margins are thin:
| What the data says | What it means for a contractor |
|---|---|
| Sums in dispute averaged 33.4% of contract budgets (HKA, Nov 2025) | When a project goes to dispute, about £1 in every £3 is on the table |
| Contractors sought time extensions worth 65.8% of the planned schedule (HKA) | Most of the fight is over time, and time has to be notified |
| #1 cause of disputes: poorly drafted, incomplete or unsubstantiated claims (Arcadis, 2022) | Claims are usually lost on how and when they were made, not on the merits |
| UK top 100 contractors' average pre-tax margin: just over 3% (Construction Index, 2026) | At 3%, one lost £100k entitlement wipes out the profit on about £3.3m of work |
The £1-in-£3 and £3.3m figures are our arithmetic from the sources.
Hard time-bars and soft notices
Not every late notice is fatal, which is why it helps to rank them. The main contract forms treat lateness very differently:
| Contract and notice | Period | Effect of a late notice |
|---|---|---|
| NEC4 ECC 61.3, compensation event | 8 weeks from becoming aware | Hard time-bar, except events arising from a Project Manager or Supervisor instruction, notification, certificate or changed decision |
| FIDIC 1999 20.1, notice of claim | 28 days from awareness | Hard time-bar |
| FIDIC 2017 20.2.1, Notice of Claim | 28 days from awareness | Hard time-bar, unless late submission is justified (20.2.5) |
| JCT DB 2016 2.24, notice of delay | "Forthwith", once delay is reasonably apparent | Usually weakens the position rather than ending it, unless amended |
| NEC4 ECC 15.1, early warning | As soon as aware | The event is assessed as if the warning had been given (61.5, 63.7) |
The detail behind each one is in our guides to the NEC4 eight-week notice clock and the FIDIC 28-day time bar. Amended contracts can change any of these periods, so always check your particular conditions or Z clauses.
Where notice events hide on site
On most projects, the first record of a notice event isn't a notice. It's a passing reference in one of these:
- Site group chats, where instructions are often given informally and quickly
- Site diaries and daily reports, written for the record, not for the commercial team
- Progress reports, where a delay is mentioned but never notified
- Meeting minutes, where something is "noted" and then forgotten
- Email threads and RFIs, where late information or a changed instruction sits several replies deep
Two features of the contracts make this dangerous. First, these mentions usually don't count as notices: NEC4 clause 13.7 requires notifications to be communicated separately from other communications "to avoid important things being overlooked", and in Obrascon v Gibraltar a progress report recording that rain had affected the works was "clearly nowhere near a notice". Second, they can still start the clock, because they show that someone on the contractor's team was aware of the event.
The result is the worst of both worlds: the record proves you knew, but it doesn't count as telling the client.
Why the usual tools don't close the gap
Most contractors already have systems around this problem, and each solves a different part of it:
- Site diary and records tools improve what gets written down, which strengthens evidence once an event is recognised.
- Contract management registers track an event well, but only after someone has entered it.
- Contract-reading tools tell you the deadline a clause sets, but not that the event behind it has already happened.
What none of them does on its own is notice the event in the first place, in the conversation where it surfaces, and connect it to the clause and the clock. That is the step where most entitlements are lost.
How to avoid time-barred claims: what good looks like
Whatever software you use, these habits close most of the gap:
- Treat every mention of delay, disruption, a changed instruction or extra cost as a potential notice event. Log it the same day, with the date the team became aware.
- Give one person ownership of the log and have them triage it daily, not at month end.
- Rank by consequence. Deal with hard time-bars first, then soft notices, then everything else.
- Send standalone notices. Cite the clause, describe the event and state the intention to claim. Never rely on reports, minutes or chat to do the job.
- Notify early rather than argue later. Under FIDIC, a contractor can give notice once it reasonably believes delay will happen; under NEC4, an early warning protects the value of the compensation event.
- Keep the trail. The original message that revealed the event is your evidence of when the clock started, and of what you knew.
Where OnNotice fits
OnNotice is built for the first step, the one the usual tools miss. It reads site messages, project email and meeting minutes as they arrive, and flags the early warnings to give and the compensation events and claims to notify. Each flag cites the governing clause under the contract your project is configured to, including your amendments. OnNotice starts the clock from the day the event surfaced, separates hard time-bars from soft notices, and counts down. Every flag links back to the original message in a tamper-evident record. It drafts; a person always decides what gets sent. See how it works.
If you manage the commercial side of NEC, FIDIC or JCT projects, we'd like to hear how notices get missed on yours. Send us a message.
Sources
- HKA, CRUX Insight 8th Annual Report: From Insight to Foresight (November 2025)
- Arcadis, 2022 Global Construction Disputes Report
- The Construction Index, Top 100 Construction Companies 2026 (September 2026)
- NEC, Understanding the purposes of notifications in NEC4 contracts (June 2026), on clause 13.7
- Obrascon Huarte Lain SA v HM Attorney General for Gibraltar [2014] EWHC 1028 (TCC), judgment, para 315
- Mansion Place Ltd v Fox Industrial Services Ltd [2021] EWHC 2972 (TCC), judgment, para 12, quoting clause 2.24 of an amended JCT Design and Build Contract 2016
This is general information about how notice provisions typically operate under NEC4, FIDIC and JCT, not legal advice for your contract. Periods and their effect are often amended, so have a contracts specialist confirm the position on your project.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a time-barred claim?
- A claim the contractor can no longer pursue because it did not give notice within the period the contract requires. Under NEC4 clause 61.3 (eight weeks) and FIDIC clause 20.1 or 20.2.1 (28 days), notice is generally a condition precedent: miss it and the entitlement to time and money is lost, however strong the underlying case.
- When does the notice clock start?
- Usually when the contractor became aware of the event, and under FIDIC also when it should have become aware. That means the clock can start when someone on site sees the event or reads about it, which is often days or weeks before the commercial team hears of it.
- Is a message in a site group chat a valid notice?
- Rarely. Contracts require notice in a particular form and to a particular person: NEC4 clause 13.7 requires notifications to be communicated separately from other communications, and FIDIC 2017 requires a Notice to be identified as one. A message in a group chat such as WhatsApp can still prove when the contractor became aware of an event, which starts the clock without counting as notice.
- What is the difference between a hard time-bar and a soft notice?
- A hard time-bar is a condition precedent: late notice ends the entitlement, as under NEC4 61.3 and FIDIC 20.1 or 20.2.1. A soft notice period still matters but late notice usually weakens the contractor's position rather than ending it, as with the JCT Design and Build 'forthwith' notice of delay under clause 2.24, unless the contract has been amended.
- What happens under NEC4 if the contractor doesn't give an early warning?
- If the Project Manager decides the contractor did not give an early warning that an experienced contractor could have given, it says so when instructing quotations (clause 61.5), and the compensation event is assessed as if the early warning had been given (clause 63.7). Effects that an early warning could have avoided are not paid for.
- Why do contractors miss compensation events?
- Rarely because they misunderstand the contract. More often the event first appears somewhere the commercial team doesn't read in time: a site group chat, a site diary, a progress report, meeting minutes or an email thread. By the time it is recognised as a compensation event or claim, the notice period has run down or run out.