Dayworks rates apply where varied work cannot properly be valued by measurement. The contractor is reimbursed for labour, plant and materials actually used, with percentage additions for overheads and profit.
It is the last option in the valuation hierarchy for a reason. Every other method pays for what was built; dayworks pay for what was spent, and those are not the same thing.
The category is narrower than it is used
Work that cannot properly be measured is a genuinely small category: investigation work of unknown extent, remedial work to an unknown condition, assistance to others, and work so fragmented that measurement would be meaningless.
In practice dayworks are used far more widely, because they are simpler for everybody on site. Nobody has to measure, nobody has to agree a rate, and the sheets get signed at the end of the week.
That convenience is bought at the client's expense. Where the work could have been measured, measurement would almost always have produced a lower figure, because it pays for output rather than for attendance.
Test measurability first
Before accepting dayworks, the question is whether the work could be described and measured after the event. Often it can: the extent is now visible even if it was not before.
Where it can, the valuation hierarchy applies and dayworks are not the correct basis, whatever was agreed informally on site. That order is set out in valuing a variation under the contract rules.
This is worth raising early, because a pattern of daywork acceptance on measurable items sets an expectation that is difficult to reverse later in the job.
The sheets decide everything
A daywork sheet records the labour by trade and hours, the plant by item and duration, and the materials used, for a specific instruction on a specific day.
Most contracts require submission within a short period, often by the end of the following week. Sheets submitted late are frequently rejected on that basis alone, and the contractor is left proving the resource some other way.
The sheets must reference the instruction they relate to. A sheet with no instruction reference records that people were on site, which is not the same as recording that they were carrying out varied work.
Signing, and what a signature means
A signature on a daywork sheet should record resource only: that the stated people, plant and materials were present. It is not agreement that the resource was reasonable, that the work was a variation, or that the basis of valuation is dayworks.
Sheets signed without that qualification are routinely presented later as agreement on all three points. Adding a line to the effect that the signature verifies resource only removes the argument entirely.
Refusing to sign at all is worse. The record is then contested on both resource and entitlement, and the party with no signed record is not necessarily the party who wins.
Reasonableness of resource
Recording that six operatives attended is not the same as accepting that six were required. Where the resource applied looks disproportionate to the work done, that is a legitimate question and it should be raised at the time.
Raised weeks later it looks like a negotiating position. Equally, raised on the day, with a note on the sheet, it is a contemporaneous observation and carries weight.
The percentage additions are equally worth checking against the contract, since they are frequently applied at rates that were never agreed.
Refurbishment is where they cluster
On refurbishment and remedial work the genuinely unmeasurable category is larger, because the extent of work is discovered as it proceeds and varies from one location to the next.
Even there, a defined provisional sum with an opening up protocol usually produces a better outcome than open dayworks, because it establishes a basis before the work starts.
The wider approach is set out under refurbishment and reuse.
What this means for you
Track the total value of dayworks monthly. A rising proportion is a signal that measurable work is being valued the expensive way, and it is easier to correct at month four than at the final account.
Then fix the signing convention at the start: resource only, submitted within the contractual period, referenced to an instruction. Those three rules remove most daywork disputes before they form. The failure mode is described in variation claim exposure.
Have daywork sheets nobody can agree?
Send the sheets and the contract. We will tell you what they establish and what they do not.