Setting up and managing NEC projects
How to choose your NEC option, set up your Activity Schedule or Bill, manage early warnings and compensation events, and apply for payment.
Written By Ashraf Ahmed
Last updated 1 day ago
Coreloops supports NEC contracts alongside JCT. When you set a project up as NEC, the platform adapts to your main option, keeps your early warnings and compensation events in one place, and carries any agreed change into your activity schedule or BOQ so your cost report reflects it. This article walks through the whole flow and links to the detailed guides.
In this article
Choosing your contract type, option and schedule
Importing or creating an Activity Schedule
Importing or creating a BOQ
Early warning notices
Compensation events
Payment applications
Choosing your contract type, option and schedule
When you create a project, you tell Coreloops which contract it sits under. That choice decides which tables and tools you see, so it is worth getting right at the start.
Select New Project, enter the General Details about the Project (Name, Reference Number, Address, Etc)
Go to the Contract Details and choose the contract type NEC4 ECC.
Select the NEC Main Option (A to F). The option you select will have a specific schedule type linked to it, but if you want to, you can select your schedule type
If your contract has secondary X options, select those too. You can pick more than one and add your own if yours is not listed.
Complete the rest of the contract details, including the contract date, total value, and any references and amendments the contract may refer to
The Programme & Time Risks tab allows you to set the project’s programme dates and time-risk terms
The Compensation Events tab allows you to set the NEC notification, quotation and reply periods that drive CE deadline tracking and reminders.
The values you enter here drive the rest of the NEC tools. In particular:
The Compensation Events and Early Warnings group holds your notification period, quotation submission period, Project Manager reply period and risk reduction meeting frequency. These are the periods Coreloops uses to track compensation event time limits and send reminders.
The Named Parties and Communication Routing group holds the Project Manager, Supervisor and Contractor's representative (name, email and address). These people are offered as recipients when you issue early warnings and compensation events.
Nothing is pre-filled. Enter the dates, periods and parties from your own contract data.
Your main option decides what sits at the heart of the project:
Two things to know before you import anything. First, the schedule type is set by your main option, so choose the option carefully. Changing it after import is being locked down in an upcoming release. Second, any compensation event you agree later is recorded against the activity schedule or BOQ, so the structure you choose now is the structure your changes land in.
1. Importing or creating an activity schedule
For Options A and C, your priced document is an activity schedule rather than a BOQ. Coreloops treats it in much the same way: sections, line items, rates, quantities and cost codes. The differences are in how it can be structured and how you can summarise and export it.
Importing or building it
Open the project and go to the Activity Schedule tab.
To import, follow the same steps as for a BOQ. The import guide is here
To build it by hand, add sections and line items directly. You can organise the schedule by calendar month, which suits contracts where activities are priced and valued month by month.
If a line is priced against a service or labour rate, the service name shown on the contact or rate appears in the schedule rather than an individual's name.
The summary tab: By Section or By Month
The summary can be viewed two ways:
By Section shows each section with its value.
By Month shows months as columns, with your original scope and each compensation event as rows, and a running total. This is only available where your schedule is organised into calendar months.
Use By Month to see how compensation events have moved the monthly profile of your contract value.
Exporting
Select Download to export the schedule to Excel. You can choose:
Which summary structure to include (By Section or By Month).
Which tabs to include (By Section, By Compensation Event).
Which columns appear, using the column picker.
2. Importing or creating a BOQ
For Options B and D, you work with a bill of quantities. Importing and creating it is the same as for any other project, so we have not repeated it here.
The one NEC difference: when a compensation event is published, its changes appear in your BOQ as their own section, so your original scope stays visible next to the changes.
3. Early warning notices
An early warning is how you tell the other party about something that could increase the Prices, delay completion, delay meeting a Key Date or impair the performance of the works (clause 15.1). Coreloops keeps every early warning in one register, so you can see what has been raised, how serious it is, who has been told, and what happened next.
In Coreloops you can:
Create an early warning and record its likelihood and severity, which combine into a risk score.
Estimate the impact on cost and time for your own use. These estimates stay internal and are not shown on the notice you send.
Issue the notice by email from Coreloops, or download it and record that you sent it another way.
Run risk reduction meetings, with an agenda drawn from your open early warnings and actions tracked with an owner and due date.
Escalate an early warning into a compensation event, with the details carried across.
In short:
For the full steps:
4. Compensation events
A compensation event is a change that entitles you to a revised price, a revised completion date, or both. Coreloops takes a compensation event from first notice through quotation and agreement, and then into your activity schedule or BOQ.
In Coreloops, you can:
Create a compensation event from scratch, from an early warning, or as a standalone event, and select the Clause 60.1 ground.
Build the event's added items and omissions, edit them in bulk, and compare them against a previous event or against your original scope so only the difference is priced.
Prepare and send a quotation, or record one you have already sent.
Move the event through its statuses, with notes and a history of each change.
Publish the agreed event so its value appears in your activity schedule or BOQ by section or by month.
Filter, export and track your compensation events, and receive reminders when a reply or quotation is coming due.
The statuses are:
Potential,
Notified,
Quotation Submitted,
Under Review,
Implemented and
Rejected.
For the full steps:
5. Payment applications
Payment applications work as they do for other projects. Your activity schedule or BOQ, including any published compensation events, feeds the application. See Payment Applications
Need help?
If you get stuck at any point, contact us through the chat in the system or email [email protected], and we will help.
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