Every standard form requires the contractor to notify delay, and most amendments tighten the requirement. Where notice was late or absent, the merits of the delay may never be reached, which is why the notice position is settled at the start of extension of time claim preparation.
Whether a particular requirement is a condition of entitlement is a legal question. What can be established commercially is what was served, when, under what provision and to whom.
What the notice is for
To tell the other side that completion is threatened while something can still be done about it, by them or by the contractor.
To allow the contract administrator to form a view on the facts as they stand rather than on a reconstruction two years later.
The purpose explains why late notice is treated so seriously: a notice served at the final account serves neither function and both parties know it.
What the contract usually asks for
Written notice of the material circumstances, including the cause of the delay, identifying any relevant event relied on.
Frequently within a stated period, and frequently with particulars of the expected effect on completion to follow.
Sometimes further notice as the position develops, which is the requirement most often forgotten once the first notice has gone in.
Condition or procedure
Where the contract makes compliance a condition precedent, failure removes the entitlement regardless of the merits.
Where it does not, late notice affects the assessment rather than the right, which is a materially better position.
Which applies depends on the wording and on the law, and it is a point worth legal input rather than assumption, because the consequences differ completely.
Amendments that tighten it
Shorter periods, express conditions precedent, prescribed forms and prescribed recipients are all common amendments and all capable of defeating a claim.
They are frequently agreed at tender without being read, sometimes because the amendments arrive late in a negotiation that is about price.
Reading the amended clause at the start of the project, and writing the answer somewhere the site team will see it, prevents a category of loss that no later argument repairs.
What a good notice contains
The cause, the relevant event relied on, the date it arose, and the fact that completion is or may be delayed.
It does not need to quantify the delay, and attempting to do so prematurely creates a figure that will be quoted back later.
Short is better. A notice is a notice rather than a claim, and treating it as a submission is why so many are never sent.
Particulars and updates
Where the contract requires an estimate of the expected delay, provide one with the basis stated and the obvious caveat that it is an estimate.
Where it requires further notice as matters develop, a short periodic update satisfies it and costs nothing.
Silence after the first notice is read as the matter having gone away, which is exactly the inference the contract is designed to allow.
Who it goes to
The contract names a recipient and it is frequently not the person the site team deals with day to day.
Service on the wrong person may be no service at all, particularly where the contract specifies the method as well.
This takes one reading of the clause to establish and it is the single cheapest protection available on the whole subject.
Keeping the record
A register of notices, with the date, the provision, the recipient and where the copy is held, settles the question outright when it arises years later.
Email accounts close, people leave and files get archived, so the copy matters as much as the notice.
The same register allows the notice position to be established in an afternoon rather than a fortnight, which is the first thing anyone assessing the claim will want.
Where notices were not served
Establish what was served before concluding that nothing was. Correspondence raising the delay at the time sometimes satisfies the requirement even where it was not labelled a notice.
Progress reports recording the cause of delay are worth looking at for the same reason, and they are frequently overlooked.
Where nothing was served, the position needs advice rather than a surveying view, and it is better taken before a submission commits to an argument.
The practical cost of late notice
Even where entitlement survives, late notice hands the other side an argument that the delay could have been mitigated.
It also removes the contemporaneous record that would have supported the effect, since nobody was recording against an event nobody had identified.
So the notice matters twice over, contractually and evidentially, and the second is frequently the more expensive.
Notices and the working relationship
Notices are sometimes avoided as confrontational, which misreads what they are: contract administration rather than an accusation.
Projects that notify routinely have fewer disputes, because matters are dealt with while they are small and while the facts are fresh.
Where a client objects to the practice, that is worth a short conversation early, because the alternative is a worse conversation later.
What to check this week
On any project running late, which notices have gone in, under what provision, and whether any period remains open.
Where it does, the notice can still be served, and that single check has preserved more entitlement than any amount of later analysis.
Where it has closed, knowing that now changes what the claim should attempt and what it should not.
Where it fits
The notice position is established before any analysis, because it governs whether the analysis is worth commissioning.
Whether the clause makes notice a condition is initial dispute review work, taken with legal advice where the wording is tight.
Serving the notices as the project runs is ordinary cost control and variations work rather than claims work at all, which is the point.
Running late with nobody agreeing why?
Extension of time claim preparation sets out the events relied on, their effect on the programme and the contractual route to relief, in a form that can be assessed rather than argued over.