Early warning notices
Early warnings for weather, drafted from the record.
NEC asks both parties to give an early warning as soon as they are aware of a matter that could delay the work or add to its cost. Weather is the matter that is easiest to see coming and easiest to forget to notify. Construction Metric reads the forecast against the limits your site has set and drafts the notice, marked for a person to check, change and issue.
In development with early customers · A draft for review, never issued by the tool · NEC and JCT
The contract context
What a warning is, and what it is not
NEC
The early warning
Under NEC4 clause 15 (clause 16 in NEC3) the Contractor and the Project Manager each give an early warning as soon as they become aware of a matter that could increase the total of the Prices, delay Completion, delay meeting a Key Date or impair the performance of the works in use. It goes on the early warning register (the risk register in NEC3) and either party can call the meeting, the risk reduction meeting in NEC3 and the early warning meeting in NEC4, to decide what to do about it. It is a management tool, not a claim, and it is separate from notifying a compensation event.
JCT
The notice of delay
JCT has no early warning register. Under clause 2.27 of the 2016 Standard Building Contract, and its equivalents in the other forms, the Contractor gives written notice when it becomes reasonably apparent that progress is being or is likely to be delayed, naming the cause and, where it can, the expected effect. The discipline is the same: name the cause, name the effect, and give the notice when the delay becomes apparent rather than when the claim is written.
Precedence
The executed contract decides
Amendments often change what a notice must contain, how it is served and by when. The executed contract, its edition and its amendments take precedence over anything on this page. Construction Metric drafts. A person reviews and issues. Whether the obligation has been met is decided by the contract and the people administering it, never by the tool.
What you get
What the draft contains
The forecast, as it stood
The forecast in force when the draft was written, with its source and its time, kept with the notice. If the weather turns out differently, the record still shows what was known when the warning was given.
The limits your site set
Crane and MEWP gust limits, the concrete pour temperature range, mortar and coatings limits, and whatever else the site has recorded. Each breach in the forecast is listed as a time window against the operation it affects, not as a general warning about rain.
The operations affected
Drawn from the programme and the diary: what is planned for the days in question and which of it the forecast touches. The notice names activities rather than saying the works may be delayed.
The mitigation on offer
The steps the site proposes: resequencing, covering, heating, standing a crane down, bringing an operation forward. Written in as proposals, to be accepted or changed before issue.
Points for the risk reduction meeting
A short list of what needs deciding, so the meeting the contract provides for has an agenda when it is called rather than a blank page.
Marked for human review
Every draft is labelled as a draft and stays one until a named person reviews it and issues it through the channel the contract requires. The tool never sends a notice, and drafting one does not discharge the obligation to give it.
How it works
From forecast to draft
The forecast is checked
Every day the forecast for the site is read against the working limits the site has recorded, and every breach in the coming days is listed as a time window against the operation it affects.
The draft is written
The forecast, the operations affected, the proposed mitigation and the points for the meeting are set out in the form of a notice, with the sources and the time the draft was made.
A person reviews it
The draft goes to the people you name. They change it, reject it or approve it. Nothing is sent by the tool.
You issue it, the record keeps it
You issue the notice through the channel the contract requires. The issued version, who approved it, when, and the forecast it relied on are kept together beside the diary for that day.
A draft is not a notice, and this page describes the design. The weather record and the site diary are live in Construction Metric today. The rest of what this page describes is being built with early customers, and the design will follow what they need. Drafting a warning does not give one. The obligation is met only when a notice is issued in the form, by the route and within the time the executed contract requires, and that is a decision for the people running the job. What the record does is make sure the draft exists on the day the forecast turned, with the forecast, the affected operations and the mitigation already written down, so the notice can go out on time and the reasons for it are preserved. Whether a warning was late, or was needed at all, is for the project manager, not the tool.
Give the warning while it is still a warning.
Start on one site and the forecast is read against your limits every day, with the draft ready when it is needed and a person always between the draft and the issue.