Is a compensation event the same as a relief event?
No. A compensation event under NEC adjusts both money and time; a relief event, a term from PFI and facilities management contracts, usually gives relief from time obligations without any payment.
Updated: 15 September 2026. By Jack Butler-Kettle, Quantity Surveyor & Claims Consultant.
The answer
No. They come from different contract families and do different things. A compensation event is the NEC mechanism for an event that is not the contractor's risk, listed in the contract, which entitles the contractor to a change in the prices and, where it delays planned completion, a change to the completion date, assessed as a forecast on Defined Cost plus Fee. A relief event is a term found in PFI, PPP and facilities management contracts for a listed event outside the contractor's control that relieves it from the consequences of failing to meet a time or performance obligation, typically without any entitlement to payment; a compensation event in those same contracts is often a separate, narrower list that does carry money. The words are therefore not interchangeable, and a contract that uses both defines each. Read the definitions in the contract in front of you before treating either as a claim.
Example
The situation
A facilities contract lists severe weather as a relief event and a change in law as a compensation event. A week is lost to flooding, and separately a new statutory requirement adds work to the service.
What happens
- The week lost to flooding relieves the contractor from the service-failure deductions for that week but pays nothing.
- The new statutory requirement that adds work is priced and paid.
- Under an NEC4 ECC the weather event, if it met the contract's threshold, would be a compensation event and would carry both time and money.
The outcome
The label the contract gives an event decides what follows: relief from deductions for the flood week, payment for the added work.
NEC Compensation Event Review covers the money side of the event; the definitions are checked first.