Nobody approved your programme. It still binds them.

Nobody approved your programme. It still binds them

Ask a planner whether the programme was approved and you get a shrug. It went in, the Engineer had some comments, somebody said it was fine, nobody signed anything. It sits on the wall and everybody gets on with the job.

Meanwhile the contract has quietly done three things with that document. It specified in detail what had to be in it. It turned it into a binding instrument through nothing more than silence. And it told the employer's own people they are entitled to plan their work around it.

Twice now this track has run into the programme as the thing everything else gets measured against. This week it becomes a contractual document in its own right.

Eleven things it has to contain

Sub-clause 8.3 is far more prescriptive than most people realise. The initial programme goes in within twenty-eight days of the commencement notice, in the software the Specification names, as a paper copy and an electronic copy.

Then it lists what has to be in it, and the list runs to eleven items. Commencement and the time for completion, for the works and each section. The access and possession dates. The order you intend to work in — and that one is broken down into design, documents, procurement, manufacture, inspection, delivery, construction, erection, installation, nominated subcontractor work and testing. Rest days and holidays. Key delivery dates for plant and materials. The review periods for your own submissions. The sequence and timing of inspections and tests.

And a supporting report on top, which has to describe the major stages and your intended methods, give a reasonable estimate of the personnel and equipment needed at each stage, flag what changed since the last version, and set out your proposals for overcoming any delay.

That is resource loading, method statements and a mitigation plan, required by the contract rather than by good practice.

The line that makes CPM contractual

One item on that list deserves reading twice.

The programme has to show all activities, to the level of detail the Specification sets, logically linked, showing for every activity how early and how late it can start and finish, whatever float it carries, and which chain of them is critical.

Logic. Early and late dates. Float. Critical path. That is not a description of a nice-looking bar chart; it is a description of a working network model, and it is a contractual requirement.

Which means Schedule Week 11's argument that the links are the schedule, and Schedule Week 13's forward and backward pass, are not planning philosophy. They are how you comply with 8.3. A programme with dates typed in and no logic behind them does not meet the clause, whatever it looks like on the wall.

It is worth pausing on why the clause is this specific. A programme that shows only dates cannot answer the question every extension of time turns on: what would completion have been without this event? Only a linked network can be re-run. So the level of detail 8.3 demands is not administrative fussiness — it is the contract making sure the document exists in a form that can settle an argument later.

The dates you get to set

Here is the item almost nobody uses, and it is worth the whole clause.

The programme has to set out when the employer hands each area over — both getting you in and giving you control of it — in line with whatever timing the Contract Data fixes. And then the clause turns around: where the Contract Data says nothing, the programme carries the dates you are asking for.

Read that against Week 5. Sub-clause 2.1 makes access a dated obligation, and the date comes from the Contract Data. Where that document is silent, the date comes from your programme instead. You are not merely reporting your intentions; you are fixing the employer's deadlines.

Most planners fill that section in with what they hope will happen. On a job where the Contract Data left it blank, it is the difference between a wish and an obligation.

Review is not approval

The Engineer has to Review each programme, and the capital letter matters again.

Review is defined: examination and consideration of your submission to assess whether, and how far, it complies with the contract and your obligations. Nothing in that makes the Engineer responsible for your plan. The programme stays yours, the logic stays yours, and so does the risk in it.

Having reviewed, the Engineer may give a notice setting out the extent to which the programme fails to comply, or has stopped reflecting actual progress, or is inconsistent with your obligations. May — not must.

The moment it becomes the Programme

And if no such notice arrives? Twenty-one days after the initial programme, or fourteen after a revised one, the contract treats a no-objection notice as having been issued, and the document becomes the Programme.

That is the fifth silence this track has met, and it is different from the other four. The others save a right, kill a right, or cancel an instruction. This one creates a document.

Two consequences follow immediately. You proceed in accordance with the Programme, subject to your other obligations. And the employer's personnel are entitled to rely on it when planning their own activities.

So a schedule that nobody approved, that the Engineer may never have opened, is now the thing both organisations are planning around — and where the Contract Data was silent, it carries the access dates the employer has to meet.

Practical insight

Take your current programme and check it against the clause rather than against your own standards.

Does it show float and the critical path, or does it show dates? Are the activities logically linked, or are some of them constrained to dates because it was quicker? Every hard constraint you typed in is a place the network cannot calculate, and 8.3 asked for a network.

Does the supporting report exist at all? On most projects the answer is no, and it is five short sections: stages, methods, resources by stage, changes since last time, and mitigation. Writing it once takes an afternoon and it is the document that makes the programme defensible.

Check the access dates. Open the Contract Data first. If the dates are there, your programme has to match them. If they are blank, decide deliberately what you are going to put in, because you are writing somebody else's obligation.

And diary the review periods. Twenty-one days after the initial programme, fourteen after each revision. If nothing came back, note in your own records that no-objection was deemed on that date. That note costs nothing now and settles an argument later.

Key takeaways

✔ Sub-clause 8.3 lists eleven things a programme has to contain, plus a supporting report covering stages, methods, resources, changes and mitigation.

✔ The contract wants activities tied together by logic, each with its early and late limits, its float, and a visible critical chain. A dated bar chart doesn't comply.

✔ Where the Contract Data leaves access dates blank, your programme states the dates you require — which turns it into the source of the employer's obligation.

✔ Review is defined as examination and consideration to assess compliance. It isn't approval, and it doesn't move responsibility for the plan.

✔ The Engineer may give a notice of non-compliance. There is no obligation to say anything at all.

✔ Silence for twenty-one days on an initial programme, or fourteen on a revision, counts as no-objection, and the document becomes the Programme.

✔ You must then proceed in accordance with it, and the employer's personnel are entitled to rely on it when planning their own work.

What's coming next

Phase C closes here and Phase D begins with money moving. Everything so far has been about establishing that you are owed something. Payment is the machinery that turns that into cash in an account, and it has more steps and more deadlines than most people expect: a statement, a certificate, a period for the money, and a set of things the employer may hold back on the way. Next week we follow one month's money from the application you submit to the day it lands, and find out where Cost & Cash Week 16's warning about going bust while making a profit actually comes from.