Are We Managing the Project or the Contract?

An approval approaching its deadline

Consider a design submission needed to release a long-lead item for manufacture. The contractor has submitted it in accordance with the agreed requirements, but the client’s technical review is taking longer than expected. The supplier can hold the manufacturing slot for another week. After that, delivery will move into the next production cycle.

The contractor’s commercial team checks the notice requirements and records the outstanding response. The client’s team examines whether the submission was complete and whether the review period has expired. The planner identifies the effect of losing the slot. Each person has a recognisable task, and each can report progress against it.

The technical issue preventing release is a maintenance requirement that the client’s operations team needs to clarify. The designer could resolve the detail once that requirement is understood. Yet the correspondence passes between the people administering the contract, while the operations representative has no reason to know that a manufacturing decision is approaching. The submission remains outstanding on the register. Nobody has been given responsibility for securing the answer before the slot expires.

A subsequent review might establish that notices were issued correctly, the programme recorded the constraint and the client was repeatedly reminded. Those findings would matter. They would also leave a substantial part of the management problem unexplained. The records could show that everyone had performed their assigned task while the project lost an opportunity that their combined knowledge might have preserved.

Construction contracts establish obligations and allocate financial consequences. Organisations then turn those requirements into jobs, reports and approval routes. In doing so, we can allow the contract’s categories to define the management task more narrowly than the project requires.

In The Cost of Collaboration, I questioned the expenditure we accept as the ordinary commercial baseline (Evans, 2026b). The Boundaries of Trust examined how separate organisational obligations affect cooperation (Evans, 2026a). Those arrangements also influence the work itself and the standards by which we decide whether a project has been competently managed.

How contractual requirements become management routines

Much of the contract’s influence is useful. Clear instructions prevent ambiguity about the work required. Notice provisions prompt communication. Records support payment and establish what was known when a decision was made. A programme makes dependencies visible. These are central to effective delivery, and administering them properly is part of a project manager’s responsibility.

The difficulty begins when completing the prescribed activity becomes sufficient evidence that the wider responsibility has been discharged. In the approval example, the register may identify a submission date, a required response date and the person responsible for answering. It may record that an item is overdue without explaining the unresolved maintenance question or identifying who can settle it. An accurate administrative record can therefore leave the most useful management information difficult to find.

That omission can persist through several levels of reporting. The contractor reports an outstanding approval to its client counterpart, who reports a backlog of technical reviews to a manager. Both reports may be correct. Neither necessarily conveys that one particular answer is needed this week to retain a manufacturing slot. What reaches senior management depends on how the reporting categories have been designed.

Responsibilities develop around the same categories. The contract administrator handles the communication, the designer deals with technical comments and the planner reports the programme effect. The project manager may assume that these activities together will produce a decision. They will only do so if somebody connects them and follows the matter through. Allocating the component tasks does not automatically allocate responsibility for their combined result.

Yang et al. (2025) examined the distinction between compliance and discretionary effort through 345 valid survey responses from contractor project management personnel in China, supplemented by nine interviews. Stronger contractual control was associated with a greater tendency to do only what the contract required and less discretionary effort. Coordination was positively associated with both forms of performance; adaptation was associated with more discretionary effort and less emphasis on doing only what was required. The study concerns contractual functions in that setting, rather than a comparison of standard forms or proof that controls are generally harmful.

I suspect that routine checks built principally around notices, submissions and responses can also teach staff that producing them constitutes successful management. Training concentrates on the correct notice, review confirms that it was issued and the individual receives assurance that the matter has been handled. The unresolved technical decision can remain outside that assurance.

Such habits need not disappear when a different contract is adopted. In a study of three infrastructure megaprojects involving 61 interviews, af Hällström (2024) found evidence of changed organisational ways of thinking where collaborative contracts were well applied, alongside resistance and a risk of returning to conventional practices. The findings concern the implementation of collaborative contracts, rather than the relative quality of project management under different forms.

The decision the project still needs

Resolving the maintenance requirement means establishing what access the operator requires, whether the proposed detail provides it and what alteration would allow manufacture to proceed. A technical discussion needs to be accompanied by an assessment of the contractual consequences and any instruction or approval required to proceed.

The contractor may quite reasonably decline to develop and manufacture an altered detail without knowing how the additional work will be authorised and paid for. The client may reasonably require evidence that it is being asked to fund a changed requirement rather than correct a non-compliant design. The designer’s appointment may introduce a further question about responsibility. These positions cannot be removed by asking everyone to be collaborative.

Hart and Moore (2008) explain, in a theoretical economic model, how a contract can provide a reference point for what parties feel entitled to receive, with perceived shortfalls affecting subsequent performance. Their analysis also identifies a cost of flexibility where it leaves room for competing expectations. Their model is not an empirical study of construction management. Applied to the approval problem, it suggests why a request to resolve a detail may be understood differently by organisations starting from different views of the bargain.

The project manager needs to establish what commercial question is preventing action and how it can be resolved in time. An authorised, limited instruction might allow the designer to develop an option while responsibility for the original detail is examined. Alternatively, clarification may establish that no change is needed. The response depends on the appointments, available authority and technical facts. Neither goodwill nor a reservation of rights, on its own, provides permission to alter the work.

The programme should inform that decision. The important information includes the last date for release, the work affected by a missed slot and the options available if it is lost. Some work may be resequenced without moving completion; another sequence may create congestion or additional temporary works. A forecast that assumes recovery through unapproved resources gives management a misleading account of its choices.

If the approval delay does affect completion, an extension of time may adjust the contractual obligation where the terms allow it. The parties still need a credible plan for the remaining work. Mitigation and any proposed acceleration require examination of cost, feasibility and contractual responsibility. An entitlement to additional time does not itself produce a recovery plan, and a request for recovery does not settle who must fund every measure proposed.

The contractor might carry a procurement risk while the client controls the operational information needed to manage it. That allocation does not necessarily change merely because the client helps. It does mean that the project manager needs to identify whose involvement can still influence the outcome, rather than treating financial responsibility as a complete description of the action required.

Commercial teams can each serve their employers well and still leave the overall decision unresolved. A modest additional design fee might avoid a much larger loss elsewhere, but the organisation asked to incur it may receive none of that benefit. Management needs a legitimate way to authorise the expenditure and address its consequences. The failure to provide one can be a failure of the delivery arrangement even where every participant has protected its contractual position.

Using the contract to manage the work

Under NEC4’s Engineering and Construction Contract, the early warning, programme and compensation event processes can help the team address the approval problem together. Early warning can bring the threatened manufacturing slot to the attention of the relevant people. A current Accepted Programme can explain the dependency and timing. Where the response involves a qualifying change, compensation events provide a route for addressing the contractual time and financial consequences. Patterson (2019) explains the links between these processes and their application to remaining work.

The processes retain separate purposes and requirements. An early warning does not replace a compensation event notification, and acceptance of a programme does not itself award additional time or payment. The standard ECC also generally requires contractor notification of a compensation event within eight weeks of becoming aware that it has happened. The exception concerns events arising from specified Project Manager or Supervisor communications; amendments must be checked (Hunter, 2022). Reliable records, timely notices and independent financial control remain necessary. Those disciplines should inform the decision while the team can still influence its consequences.

The team needs to identify the operations representative who can clarify the requirement and arrange a discussion before the release date. Any alteration needs the appropriate authority, with the agreed action recorded. The warning has served its management purpose when it helps produce an appropriate response, whether that response is an alteration, confirmation of the existing detail or a reasoned decision to accept the delay.

It is possible instead to record the warning, hold a meeting and leave the technical question to circulate through the original channels. The register then demonstrates that the process occurred, while the delivery problem remains. Broome (2024), writing as a practitioner on the NEC website, warns that overcomplication, fear of consequences and contractual games can undermine early warning. He recommends prompt discussion involving people empowered to act.

As discussed in The Boundaries of Trust (Evans, 2026a), NEC4 can provide commercial alignment as well as collaborative procedures, depending on the options and appointments used. Its adoption does not automatically bring a separately appointed designer or operator within a common reward structure. Authority and incentives need to support the decisions the procedures are intended to enable.

Gharouni Jafari, Mottee and Whyte (2025) report emerging findings from 27 interviews concerning Australian water infrastructure projects using NEC4. They identified difficulties with implementation, collaboration competencies, and systems and processes across office and site teams. The findings describe obstacles to working together under those contracts, rather than demonstrate how another form would have performed.

Suprapto et al. (2016), analysing 113 capital projects, found no direct differences in performance associated with contract types and incentives. Their analysis supported indirect relationships through relational attitudes and teamwork quality. The quality of the working relationship therefore warrants attention alongside the choice of form. A capable team under a conventional form may resolve the approval promptly; an NEC4 team may fail to do so.

What competent management should demonstrate

I would expect a review of the approval problem to examine both the contractual position and the delivery response. It should establish whether the required communications were issued and whether expenditure was properly authorised. It should also establish whether the team understood the technical obstacle, involved the people able to resolve it and made the decision while the relevant options remained available.

Reporting that the client has been reminded is useful, but incomplete if nobody has established why the answer is outstanding. Reporting that the contractor owns the procurement risk is similarly incomplete if the client holds information essential to managing it. The manager needs to explain how those facts have informed the next action and who will carry it through.

This does not justify judging every decision by hindsight. The team may investigate promptly and conclude that the detail needs further development, accepting the later manufacturing slot as the sounder choice. An apparently attractive alternative may prove unsafe or technically unsuitable. Competence includes recognising those constraints and recording a reasoned decision on the information available at the time. It cannot be measured simply by whether delay was avoided.

An outstanding approval should identify the question preventing release and its decision date, alongside the contractual response date. Escalation should reach someone able to remove the obstacle before the opportunity expires. Where the decision requires expenditure, the financial review should consider the exposure created by waiting as well as the amount proposed for approval. Independent checking gives that comparison credibility.

The lessons retained after an event matter too. If the manufacturing slot is lost, a review may lead to tighter notice controls or more frequent reminders. Those measures might be warranted. The review should also consider whether the operations team entered the process too late, whether authority was unclear or whether the reports concealed the urgency. Otherwise, the organisation can become better at documenting the same failure each time it occurs.

The research establishes a basis for examining how contracts influence behaviour and how organisations put them into practice. It does not measure how often administrative compliance displaces effective management. That wider proposition remains my interpretation of the evidence and the practical examples considered here.

Construction contracts help organise necessary work. The responsibility for managing a project extends to examining whether that work produces the decisions delivery requires. In the manufacturing example, the notice, programme and commercial assessment should help the team reach an informed decision before the slot expires. A competent account of the event should explain how they contributed to that decision, as well as confirm that they were completed.