How does NEC4 clause 61.3 work?

Clause 61.3 is the Contractor's notification and the time bar attached to it. Where the Contractor believes an event has happened or is expected to happen which is a compensation event, and the Project Manager has not notified it, the Contractor notifies the Project Manager. The notification must be given within eight weeks of the Contractor becoming aware that the event has happened. If it is not, the Contractor is not entitled to a change in the Prices, the Completion Date or a Key Date, unless the event is one the Project Manager should have notified to the Contractor and did not. That exception matters. Events which arise from an instruction or a changed decision by the Project Manager or the Supervisor are ones the Project Manager notifies, so the eight weeks bites hardest on events the Contractor discovers for itself: physical conditions, weather, late access, something the Client was to provide, or a breach by the Client. The clock runs from awareness of the event, not from the moment its cost becomes clear, and a Contractor who waits for the figures before notifying is the commonest way the entitlement is lost. The notification is a separate communication from an early warning and from the quotation; one document does not do the work of another. Three things go wrong in practice. The notice is buried in a progress report or a meeting minute rather than sent as a notification. The date of awareness is disputed because nobody recorded when the site team first saw the problem. And the event is notified as a general complaint without saying which compensation event it is. Keep a dated record of first awareness beside each notification, and check the executed contract, because amended forms change both the period and the exception.