You disagree with it. You comply with it anyway.

You disagree with it. You comply with it anyway

The DAAB has appeared in nearly every week of this track and never been opened. It is where a notice of dissatisfaction goes, it is a decision you can be terminated for ignoring, and it is the step between a determination you dislike and an arbitration nobody wants.

It also does something unusual, and that is the thing to understand first. A DAAB decision is binding on both parties as soon as it is given, and both have to comply promptly — whether or not either of them gives a notice of dissatisfaction about it. Disagreeing doesn't suspend it. You comply, and you argue afterwards.

The employer is also made responsible for the Engineer complying with the decision, which closes the obvious gap.

It is worth asking why a decision binds before anybody has finished arguing about it. The alternative is a project where every unwelcome answer can be parked by disputing it, and the answer to that is a job where nothing gets resolved until the end. Immediate compliance keeps the works moving and pushes the argument into a channel that runs alongside the job rather than stopping it. The money can be returned later; the eighteen months of standing still cannot.

The board is supposed to already exist

The 2017 editions changed what this body is, and most projects still use the old version.

The members are appointed jointly within the period stated in the Contract Data — and where nothing is stated, within twenty-eight days after you receive the letter of acceptance. Not when a dispute appears. At the start, when there is nothing to argue about and everybody is still friendly.

It comprises three members unless the Contract Data says one, chosen from a list in that document. Where the number isn't stated and the parties don't agree otherwise, it is three.

Then it stays. It convenes a meeting with the parties as soon as practicable after appointment, and it makes site visits. By the time something goes wrong, the board has walked the job, met the people, and watched the problem develop.

The part that never produces a document

That standing arrangement makes the most useful provision in Clause 21 possible, and it is one almost nobody uses.

The board can offer what the rules call Informal Assistance. It can come up in conversation whenever the board and the parties are together — around a table, on a call, over video — or while the members are walking the job, or in a short note sent to both sides. Where there are three members, they give it as one or not at all.

Nothing about it is enforceable. It decides nothing, and no procedure attaches to it. It is three experienced people who know the job saying what they think while the matter is still a disagreement rather than a dispute.

There is one boundary, and it exists to protect the board's other function: no informal assistance during a hearing, unless both parties ask for it. Advising and adjudicating are kept apart.

The name of the body says which half matters more. It is a Dispute Avoidance/Adjudication Board, and avoidance comes first.

How a dispute actually gets there

Trace the route from Week 3's determination and the timetable is tighter than it looks.

The Engineer determines a matter. You have twenty-eight days to give a notice of dissatisfaction, and if you don't, the determination is final and binding — the one clock in this contract with no rescue. With a notice served, the matter can be referred to the DAAB.

The board then has eighty-four days from receiving the reference, or whatever longer period it proposes and both parties agree. What comes back has to be written, reasoned, sent to each party with the Engineer copied in, and it has to identify the sub-clause it is issued under.

That last requirement is Week 1's labelling rule again, and by now it should be unsurprising: the contract asks every document that carries consequences to say what it is.

Twenty-eight days at the other end too

The decision arrives, and another window opens.

Either party dissatisfied with the decision may give a notice of dissatisfaction, and if none is given within twenty-eight days of receiving it, the decision becomes final and binding as well. Where the board fails to give its decision inside its period, either party has twenty-eight days after that expiry to serve one.

And then the sentence that decides how seriously to take all of this: neither party may commence arbitration of a dispute unless a notice of dissatisfaction has been given in respect of it.

So the route to arbitration runs entirely through notices. Miss the first twenty-eight days and the determination stands. Miss the second and the decision stands. There is no separate door.

The unpaid invoice clause

One provision worth knowing because it is so easily missed.

If, at the end of the decision period, any DAAB member's invoice is overdue and unpaid, the board isn't obliged to give its decision until those invoices have been paid in full. It then decides as soon as practicable after payment.

Read that as a practical warning rather than a curiosity. A party that is short of money and slow to pay the board can delay its own decision without deciding to. And on a job where payment is already the argument, that isn't a hypothetical.

Practical insight

Find out whether your board exists. On most projects the honest answer is no, and the appointment is already overdue — the period ran from the letter of acceptance, and nobody diarised it. Check the Contract Data for the list of names and the number of members, then ask whether anybody was appointed.

If the board does exist, use the informal side. When a matter starts to look like it won't resolve, raise it at the next site visit rather than waiting until it has a number attached. That conversation costs nothing and settles a surprising proportion of what would otherwise become references.

Add the second twenty-eight days to the determination log from Week 10. That log already tracks the window after an Engineer's determination. A DAAB decision opens an identical window, at a point when everybody is even more tired of the subject.

And comply with decisions you intend to challenge. It feels wrong, and it is the rule: prompt compliance, then the notice, then the argument. Failing to comply is a termination ground under Week 17, which is a heavy price for making a point.

Key takeaways

✔ A DAAB decision binds both parties immediately and must be complied with promptly, whether or not anybody gives a notice of dissatisfaction.

✔ The employer is responsible for the Engineer complying with it as well.

✔ Members are appointed jointly within the Contract Data period, or twenty-eight days after the letter of acceptance — at the start of the job, not when trouble arrives.

✔ Three members unless the Contract Data says one. If the number isn't stated and nobody agrees otherwise, it is three.

✔ Informal Assistance can be given at meetings, on site visits or by an informal note — but not during a hearing unless both parties ask.

✔ The board decides within eighty-four days of the reference — written, reasoned, copied to the Engineer, and identifying the sub-clause it is issued under.

✔ Arbitration requires a notice of dissatisfaction. Twenty-eight days after the determination, and twenty-eight after the decision — miss either and the matter is closed.

What's coming next

Eighteen weeks in one family of contracts is long enough. NEC4 does the same job with a different philosophy: an early warning register both parties maintain, compensation events assessed prospectively rather than argued after the fact, and a programme carrying far more contractual weight than anything in Clause 8. Next week we set the two side by side — not to decide which is better, but because the contrast shows what each one is actually trying to prevent, and one of them is trying to prevent the situation this whole track has been managing.