Notice of delay
With a notice of delay, site management records towards a contractor that a date has been exceeded or foreseeably will be. It is not a spontaneous means of pressure, but the result of a prior review – and its purpose is not escalation, but a return to the agreed sequence.
The three conditions
In practice, a notice of delay is usually regarded as sound only when three points are met together:
- A binding date has been agreed – from the works contract or an approved schedule programme.
- There is an objectively verifiable deviation between the intended and the actual state.
- No recognised impediment justifies the delay.
If one of these is missing, the notice has no effect. The third is often skipped: where an impediment is justified, the contractor is not in default – the question of an extension of time then has to be settled first.
What carries the evidence
A subjective impression on the part of site management is not enough. The delay has to be substantiated traceably – usually through site minutes, photographic records, the site diary and the updated schedule. An oral notice is hard to prove later, and schedule and defect matters are handled separately because their consequences differ.
A comparison of intended and actual state is only possible if the original state has been preserved. In Menira every approved version of the schedule remains as its own state, so the planned date does not have to be reconstructed after the fact.
This article sets out common practice and does not replace legal advice in an individual case.