NEC
NEC — the New Engineering Contract family, NEC4 being the current edition — is the standard form built around programme, early warning and compensation events rather than claims.
NEC tries to prevent the argument instead of adjudicating it: early warning registers, programmes submitted and accepted as a running consensus, and compensation events priced as quotations while the work is still decidable. The discipline it demands — four-week quotation windows, notice within two weeks of becoming aware — punishes late thinking by design.
The trade-off is administrative weight. NEC rewards teams that run it properly and quietly bankrupts the programme of anyone who treats its machinery as optional. Compared with JCT, NEC buys management information and control; JCT buys familiar machinery and a lighter weekly burden. The choice is an organisational one, not a technical one.
Related: jct · extension of time · x clauses