Time bar provisions are found in many construction contracts. They normally govern claims by contractors (for extensions of time and additional payment) but they can also apply to employers’ claims. They require the right document with the right level of information about a claim to be sent in the right way to the right person within the right time. If any of these requirements are not met for a given claim, it is said to be wholly barred. 

Often it is the time requirement that is not met. The time requirement is usually a somewhat arbitrary period. For instance, the first and second editions of the NEC’s engineering and construction contract specified a period of two weeks. NEC3 quadrupled it to eight weeks, which NEC4 has stuck with. 

Some contracts run time from when the relevant event (if not also an entitlement) is known or should be known. The most extreme clauses run time from when the event occurs. Thus, time may expire on a claim before it can be known, let alone notified. Fortunately, this particular trigger seems to be rarely used. 

Ways are found to avoid barring entire claims (especially larger claims), even if those ways strain the law or the facts

Non-compliance with time bar provisions is commonly due to inadequate methods for identifying potential claims. Greater use of better technology should combat this, but non-compliances will still be inevitable. That is partly due to the reticence of some parties in notifying claims. This may be because it is wrongly assumed that the other party will not invoke a time bar provision. It is also spurred on by a disbelief that a third-party dispute-decider would bar an entire claim.

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