What should an NEC compensation event quotation contain?
The proposed change to the prices, built up from Defined Cost plus Fee using the Schedule of Cost Components; any change to the completion date shown on a revised programme; and the assumptions the forecast relies on.
Updated: 15 September 2026. By Jack Butler-Kettle, Quantity Surveyor & Claims Consultant.
The answer
Three parts, and the contract names all of them. First, the change to the prices, which under NEC4 is the effect of the event on Defined Cost plus the Fee, forecast where the work is still to be done and actual where it has been, built up from the Schedule of Cost Components rather than from bill rates unless the parties agree to use rates. Second, any delay to the completion date or a key date, demonstrated by a revised programme showing the effect of the event on planned completion, not an assertion. Third, the assumptions: where the project manager has stated assumptions in the instruction, the quotation is based on them and says so; where the contractor has had to make its own, it lists them, because a quotation on stated assumptions can be corrected later and one on unstated ones cannot. A covering summary that identifies the event, the notification date, the instruction date and the total gives the reader the shape before the detail.
Example
The situation
An instruction to relocate a duct run is notified as a compensation event. The quotation is put together for the extra week the relocation takes, with its programme effect and its assumptions stated.
What happens
- The quotation shows people and equipment from the Schedule of Cost Components at the contract's rates for the extra week.
- The additional materials are shown at cost, and the Fee is applied.
- A revised programme fragment shows two days' effect on the following activity and none on completion.
- One assumption is stated: that the existing duct can be reused.
- The total, the event reference and the dates sit on the first page.
The outcome
The quotation carries its cost from the Schedule of Cost Components, its Fee, its programme effect and its one stated assumption, with the total, reference and dates on the first page.
NEC Compensation Event Review reads a quotation against those three parts before it is submitted or accepted.