NEC4 & Records

Nec4 is demanding, and rightly so. Do it properly and you positively influence project outcomes. But modern contracts demand transparency and accountability. The timescales are tight and there's a lot to do. That's why 20 years ago, I founded SEMAR, now part of the Think Project Group and used by over 50,000 practitioners. I've worked for NEC contracts since 2007 as a tutor and helped draft NEC4. During this time, I've come to believe three things are essential to successful NEC contracting contract culture, knowledge and discipline. A healthy culture avoids arguing facts unnecessarily, eroding precious trust capital on things we can simply record. Knowledge of what's happening on site fuels better decision making. Records are the oxygen to NEC4 processes. Establishing a discipline avoids gaps, inconsistency and error. With the right tools, this can be kept simple and made easy. As an industry, we're pretty good at quality, health, safety and environment. QHSE is law. Get it wrong and structures fail, people get hurt. But commercial chaos isn't without pain. Missing site diaries, partial resource allocations and lost context all contribute to project failure, dispute, stress and even insolvency. I'm convinced we need a fresh approach. Records must be consistent and contemporaneous, structured and speak to the contract signed. But we can go further. Site data, if gathered properly, drives productivity insights essential to program revisions, payment and compensation event assessments. Today's data gives us insights we can use for tomorrow's projects. I believe that if we invest in robust records, the rest of NEC becomes so much simpler. Healthy records lead to healthy projects.