A notice calendar built from the change order register, not from memory

Most construction contracts give each party a fixed number of days to give notice of a change, a delay or a claim, counted from the day the event was recognized. Twenty one days is common. Some say ten, some say thirty. The number is in the general conditions, it applies to the owner as much as to the contractor, and it is almost never tracked by anyone.

The reason is that a deadline needs a start date, and the start date is a fact about the site, not about the paperwork. A calendar built from the dates letters were sent counts the wrong thing. A calendar built from the change order register, with the event date on every entry, counts the right one.

Two dates on every change

Each entry in the register carries two dates that people confuse. The first is the date the condition was recognized: the day the excavator hit the old foundation, the day the revised drawing was issued, the day the owner asked for the extra door. The second is the date the entry was made in the register, which might be the same day or might be three weeks later when the paperwork caught up.

The notice clock runs from the first date. A register that records only the second will show every deadline as later than it is, and will show it in the owner's favor, which is the dangerous direction. The discipline is to ask, for every entry, when this was first known, and to write that date down even when it is embarrassing.

The calendar is a sort, not a document

Once every entry has an event date and the contract's notice period is a number in the ledger, the calendar writes itself: event date plus notice days equals the deadline, and sorting the open entries by deadline puts the nearest one at the top. On a fictional $18 million school renovation with fourteen open items, the sorted list might show three deadlines inside the next week, five within the month, and six already passed.

The six that passed are the interesting ones. For each, the question is whether notice was actually given in time, and by whom. If the contractor gave notice, the owner should have a dated letter, and the register should carry its reference. If the contractor did not, the contract may say the claim is barred, and the owner should know that before negotiating the price. If the owner is the one who owed notice, the same applies in reverse.

What counts as notice

Contracts differ on this, and it is worth reading yours before relying on the calendar. Some require a formal written notice citing the clause. Some accept a meeting minute or an email that describes the event and says a change may follow. A register that records the form of notice given, alongside the date, lets the owner see at once which items rest on a letter and which rest on an email that might not count.

Which items need a deadline at all

Not every entry does. An owner scope change that the owner requested in writing is its own notice. A change order that has already been executed has passed the point where notice matters. The items that need watching are the ones where the cause is still open: the unforeseen condition the contractor has flagged but not priced, the design gap the architect has not yet accepted, the coordination issue that may or may not turn into money.

Filtering the calendar to those items, and to items where the cause is still unclassified, cuts the list to the ones the owner can still influence. A monthly look at that list, with the deadlines in days rather than dates, is enough on most projects.

The clock the owner is counting for itself

Owners tend to read the notice clause as a defense: the contractor missed the deadline, so the claim fails. It is also an obligation. When the owner recognizes that a change is coming, from a tenant, from a code official, from its own board, the owner's own notice clock starts, and a contractor who was told late has an argument about the cost of the delay. The same register, with the owner's own events entered on the day they happen, keeps both clocks.

None of this needs a special tool. It needs an event date on every entry, a number of days from the contract, and the habit of sorting by the result once a month. What a ledger adds is that the arithmetic is done on every entry every day, and the entry that crossed its deadline yesterday is at the top this morning.

In the product

Change order register, GMP baseline. Free tool: Change Order Exposure.

Keep reading

Earlier: Contingency transfers between the two funds: when the contractor asks to move money. Later: Scope gaps at buyout: when a package is awarded low because something was left out. All articles on change orders.