One of these clocks has no way back.

One of these clocks has no way back

Nine weeks of this track have produced periods the way a job produces snagging items: one at a time, each in its own context, none of them written down together.

So here they are on one page. It is the least interesting thing in this track and the most worth pinning to a wall, because three of these periods can end a right outright — and only two of the three have any way back.

What actually starts a clock

Before the periods, the trigger, because most missed notices are missed here rather than through carelessness.

The claim clock doesn't start when somebody decides to claim. It doesn't start when the cost becomes clear, or when the commercial team gets involved. It starts when the claiming party became aware of the event, or should have become aware of it.

Those last five words move the start date out of your control and usually backwards. A driller's log showing the change in penetration. A delivery note that arrived short. A site diary entry written by somebody who had no idea it mattered. Any of them can fix the date, and none of them will feel like the beginning of anything at the time.

The other thing worth knowing is that both claim clocks run from that same moment. The eighty-four days don't start when you serve your notice. Serve on day twenty-seven and you have fifty-seven days left, not eighty-four.

One more thing about the trigger, because it decides who has to notice. The person who becomes aware is rarely the person who writes notices. A ganger sees the penetration rate drop, a storeman signs for a short delivery, a setting-out engineer finds a level that does not match the drawing. The contract does not care that none of them thought about clause numbers. Their awareness is the contractor's awareness, and the clock started that morning.

The three that can end a right

Now the ones that matter. Three periods in these conditions can finish an entitlement, and they work in different ways.

The first is the twenty-eight days for the notice of claim. Miss it and there is no additional payment and no extension of time, and the other party is discharged from liability in connection with that event. Week 1 covered this one: the right doesn't shrink, it stops existing.

The second is less well known and catches people who thought they were safe because the notice went in. Within eighty-four days you have to submit the fully detailed claim — and if the statement of contractual basis isn't in it, the notice of claim itself is treated as having lapsed. It is no longer a valid notice at all. Serving on time and then going quiet undoes the thing you did right.

The third is the twenty-eight days for a notice of dissatisfaction after a determination. Miss it and you are treated as having accepted the determination, and it becomes final and binding.

The rescue built into two of them

Here is the part that repays reading carefully, because the contract is more forgiving than its reputation on two of the three.

If the Engineer thinks your notice of claim was late, he has fourteen days to say so. If that notice doesn't come, yours is treated as a valid notice. And if your claim lapses at eighty-four days, the Engineer again has fourteen days to declare the lapse — and again, silence means your notice survives.

So both claim clocks have the same escape hatch, and it is the same fourteen days. A late notice on a project where the Engineer is also behind on his correspondence may well be a valid notice.

The notice of dissatisfaction has nothing of the kind. There's no fourteen-day window, no deemed anything, no silence that helps. Twenty-eight days pass and the determination is yours to live with. It is the only fatal clock in the contract with no way back, and it is also the one that arrives when everybody is tired and the argument feels finished.

There is a reason the two claim clocks are forgiving and the third is not. The first two are about administration — getting a piece of paper into the right hands while a job is running and everybody is busy. The third comes after a formal process has already happened: consultation, a determination, reasons, particulars. By that point the contract assumes both parties know exactly where they stand, so it stops making allowances.

The clocks that run for you

Three periods on that list are somebody else's deadline, and Week 6 collected them under a name worth keeping: silences.

The Engineer's fourteen days on a late claim notice, the same fourteen on a lapse, and the seven days to answer a challenged instruction. In every case, if nothing comes back, the position moves your way — your notice stands, or the instruction is revoked.

These are worth diarising precisely because nobody is going to tell you they have expired. A clock that runs in your favour still needs somebody watching it.

The ones that are only procedure

The rest of the list is administration, and treating it as though it were a time bar wastes energy you need elsewhere.

Failing to submit the initial programme inside twenty-eight days is a breach, and it weakens the document your extension of time will be measured against, but it doesn't bar a claim. The forty-two days for consultation is a stage that ends rather than a deadline you miss — when it expires, the matter simply moves to determination. The twenty-one days before suspension is a floor, not a ceiling: it is the earliest you may act, not the latest.

Knowing which band a period sits in is most of the value of the table. Panic is expensive, and so is calm in the wrong place.

Practical insight

Make the wall chart. Three columns, three bands, and the clause number against each row so anybody can check it.

Then put two standing entries in whatever system your team actually uses. The first is a review of open events against the twenty-eight day clock, run weekly, asking one question: is there anything here we became aware of, or should have become aware of, more than three weeks ago? Not decided to claim. Became aware.

The second is a determination log. Every determination that lands gets a row, a date, and a hard stop twenty-eight days later. That's the clock with no rescue, and it is the one most likely to be missed, because a determination usually arrives after months of argument when everybody wants to stop thinking about it.

And keep Week 8's point in view while you do this. Serving a notice on day twenty-seven with no records behind it protects a right you can't then prove. The clocks keep the entitlement alive. Only the records make it worth anything.

Key takeaways

✔ Both claim clocks start when you became aware or should have become aware — not when anybody decided to claim.

✔ The eighty-four days run from that same moment, so serving late in the twenty-eight leaves you less time, not more.

✔ Three periods can end a right: the twenty-eight day notice of claim, the eighty-four day detailed claim, and the twenty-eight day notice of dissatisfaction.

✔ A claim that was notified on time still lapses if the statement of contractual basis doesn't arrive within the eighty-four days.

✔ Both claim clocks have the same rescue: fourteen days of Engineer silence and your notice is treated as valid.

✔ The notice of dissatisfaction has no rescue at all. It is the only fatal period with nothing behind it.

✔ Programme submission, the consultation period and the suspension wait are procedure. They matter, but they don't bar a claim.

What's coming next

Phase C has one more piece. Twice now the programme has turned up as the document everything else is measured against — contractually required, contractually updated, and quietly decisive when somebody has to work out what completion would have looked like without the event. Next week we look at what the contract actually asks a programme to contain, what happens when the Engineer reviews it and says nothing, and why the difference between a programme that has been accepted and one that has merely been received is worth more than most planners realise.