Anything not in the statement never existed.

Two statements, and the first one also closes

There are two of them, and the first catches people who have only ever met the second.

A statement at completion goes in within twelve weeks of the completion date: the value of work done, any further sums considered due, and an estimate of amounts that have or will become due afterwards.

A draft final statement follows within eight weeks of the Performance Certificate, in the same three parts, for the whole of the contract.

And the cessation clause reaches back to both. For matters arising before taking over, the amount has to have been in the statement at completion — so a document submitted years before the account closes is already a gate, and a project that treated it as an interim formality has closed a door without noticing.

The timing makes that easy to get wrong. The statement at completion goes in during the busiest month of the finishing phase, by a commercial team working on handover, and it looks like one more application among many. It is the last chance to preserve anything that happened during construction.

The estimate column

Each statement has a third part, and it is the one that protects anything unfinished.

Alongside the value of work done and the sums considered due sits an estimate of amounts that have or will become due. Things not yet quantified. Things not yet resolved. Things nobody has finished arguing about.

That column exists because the alternative is absurd: a contractor would have to abandon anything not fully priced by the submission date. Including a figure with a stated basis keeps it alive. Leaving it out because it can't yet be pinned down is how genuine entitlements disappear quietly, and it happens for the most reasonable-sounding reason there is.

Using it well also requires stating a basis rather than a number alone. A figure with no explanation invites a challenge to the figure; a figure with the reasoning beside it invites a conversation about the reasoning, and only the second of those can end in agreement.

The discharge, and what it can rest on

With the final statement goes a discharge: a confirmation that the total represents full and final settlement of everything due under or in connection with the contract.

It reads like a surrender, and it carries two permitted qualifications, and nothing in the form prompts you to use them.

It may say the total is subject to whatever becomes due in a dispute already running before a board or in arbitration. And it may be expressed to take effect only once the contractor has received full payment of the certified amount and the return of the performance security.

That second one converts a signature into a conditional instrument. Signed unconditionally, you have discharged the contract and are waiting for money. Signed conditionally, the discharge arrives when the money does.

The difference costs a sentence and it isn't a negotiating position — the clause expressly contemplates it. Which makes an unconditional discharge a thing somebody chose, whether or not they knew they were choosing.

Not submitting doesn't stop it

Here is the provision that removes the most common informal strategy.

Where no draft final statement is submitted, the Engineer asks for one. If none arrives within four weeks of that request, the Engineer issues the final payment certificate for the amount the Engineer fairly considers due.

So delay doesn't preserve a position. The account closes on somebody else's assessment, built from the documents they hold, without the estimate column and without any amount you would have included.

And their assessment isn't adversarial. It is what a reasonable person concludes from an incomplete file, which is precisely the problem: the file is incomplete because your half of it never arrived.

Which is worth knowing in the situation where the temptation is strongest: a disputed account, a team that has dispersed, and nobody left who wants to own the assembly of the numbers.

Fifty-six days to disagree

One more door, and it closes fastest.

After the final payment certificate is received, the contractor has eight weeks to make a claim about the amounts in it. Say nothing in that period and the certified amounts are treated as accepted.

Eight weeks is generous for reading a certificate and short for a team that no longer exists. The certificate arrives at an office where the project is a closed file, addressed to people who left, about a job the organisation considers finished.

And nothing about its arrival announces what it starts. It is a certificate among certificates, in an envelope, and the period runs from receipt rather than from anybody reading it.

Which makes the arrival of that certificate a diary entry somebody has to have made years earlier — and it is the thing this whole phase has been quietly demonstrating. The end of a project is administered by whoever thought, at the beginning, to write a date down.

Which is the last instance on this track of something the whole of it has described. An entitlement survives or expires on whether a date was in somebody's diary, and the diary entry had to be made by a person who would not be there to benefit from it.

System design

Row two is the only entry in this dictionary whose verified against column names every other record on the track. A final statement assembled from memory is a shorter document than one assembled from indexes, and the difference between them is permanent.

Record	Produced by	Required quality	Verified against	Feeds
Statement at completion	You, within twelve weeks	Treated as a gate rather than an interim formality	The registers, phase by phase	What survives for pre-handover matters
Draft final statement	You, within eight weeks of the certificate	Assembled from indexes rather than from recollection	Every register this track asked for	The whole of the employer’s liability
Estimate column, with bases	You, in both statements	A figure and its basis for anything not yet quantified	What is still unresolved	Whether unfinished arguments survive
Conditional discharge	You, with the statement	Expressed to take effect on payment and return of the security	The permitted qualifications	Whether you release before you are paid
Expected date of the FPC	You, years in advance	Diarised, because it arrives at a closed file	The certificate sequence	The eight weeks to disagree

Row five asks for a diary entry made years before the thing it is about. The certificate arrives at an organisation that has closed the file, and the eight weeks to disagree run from receipt whether or not anybody opened the envelope.

Practical insight

Build your statement from your indexes, not from your memory.

Every register this track has asked you to keep is a source of line items: the access register holds delays you were owed answers on, the review register holds laps you paid for, the constraint log holds waiting that was somebody else's, the parts register holds the periods that ran long. Go through each of them and ask one question — did this cost anything, and is that amount in the statement.

Then do the sweep in the other direction. Take the statement and read it against the phases of the project rather than against your files: front end, start-up, engineering, procurement, construction, finishing, closure. An entire phase with nothing against it is either a phase that cost you nothing or a phase whose records you haven't opened.

And write the discharge as a conditional one. It costs a sentence, it is expressly permitted, and the difference between the two versions is whether you are a creditor with a signed release outstanding or a party whose release lands when the payment does.

Key takeaways

• The employer’s liability ceases except to the extent an amount was expressly included in the statement.
• Raised at the time, discussed in a meeting or evident from the documents isn't the same as included, as an amount, in one schedule.
• A statement at completion goes in within twelve weeks of the completion date, showing work done, further sums, and an estimate of what will become due.
• The cessation clause reaches back to it for matters before taking over, so that earlier document is already a gate.
• A draft final statement follows within eight weeks of the Performance Certificate, in the same three parts.
• The estimate column keeps alive anything not yet quantified, and leaving items out because they can't be pinned down is how entitlements disappear.
• The discharge confirms full and final settlement, and may be qualified for disputes already running.
• It may also be expressed to take effect only on full payment and the return of the performance security, which makes it conditional rather than absolute.
• Where no draft final statement is submitted, the Engineer requests one and then certifies what the Engineer fairly considers due.
• So delay doesn't preserve a position; the account closes on somebody else’s assessment, without your estimate column.
• After the final payment certificate, eight weeks to claim about the amounts in it, or they are treated as accepted.
• That certificate arrives at an office where the project is a closed file, addressed to people who have left.

Records born here. The statement at completion, and what it did and didn't include · the draft final statement, built from the registers · the estimate column, with the basis of each figure · the discharge, and the conditions attached to it · the phase-by-phase sweep proving nothing was missed · the date the final payment certificate is expected, diarised years in advance.

What is coming next

The account is closed and the money has moved. What is left is paper, and it outlives the people who made it.

Some of it is required by the contract, some by law, some by an insurer, and some by whoever operates the asset for the next forty years. The last week of this phase is about which records survive, who they are for, and the fact that nobody on the project will ever be the one to use them.