What this guide is for
This guide covers the meeting: ten questions for the contractor's planner, a way to score the answers, and a rule for turning the score into a decision under NEC4. Its companion, Reading a Contractor's Schedule You Didn't Build, covers the week-one desk read: version, data date, DCMA 14 metrics, calendars and duration plausibility. Do that first. In both, each question is an invitation to explain, not an accusation.
A programme submitted for acceptance is a commercial document as well as a planning tool. It becomes the baseline against which delay is assessed and tells the story the contractor wants the client to believe. That does not make it dishonest, but the contractor's interests and the client's interest in an accurate view of delivery risk are not aligned.
Optimism bias in infrastructure planning is well documented, and the HM Treasury Green Book (2026 edition) requires it to be adjusted for in appraisal. A reviewer should therefore assume a submitted programme may be a best case until the answers show it is a central estimate. Two terms are used throughout. A time risk allowance (TRA) is a visible block of time added to protect a date against uncertainty; NEC4 cl.31.2 requires the programme to show float and time risk allowances. Completion Date is the date in the contract; planned Completion is the date the programme shows.
1. Float and time risk allowances
Ask where the float is and what each block of time is for. Planned Completion equal to the Completion Date is not a fault if the time risk sits in visible TRAs that protect Completion. The warning signs are time risk hidden inside activity durations, or an unexplained block of float at the end. Unexplained high float usually means missing logic, so ask what the highest-float activities represent.
Then ask who owns any gap between planned Completion and the Completion Date. Under NEC4, delay is assessed from its effect on planned Completion on the Accepted Programme, so in practice the Contractor holds that gap as its own time buffer. Under JCT and FIDIC the answer depends on the contract wording; the SCL Delay and Disruption Protocol (2nd edition, 2017) treats float as a shared resource unless the contract says otherwise.
2. Logic
Pick the three or four dependencies that drive the completion date and ask why each is structured as it is. An experienced planner answers specifically: mechanical supports hang from the secondary steelwork, so mechanical installation cannot start until that steel is complete and inspected. A vague answer such as "they are logically dependent" is a gating concern.
Separate relationships from constraints. A date forced by a constraint is not a dependency. Ask whether each driving link is a physical or contractual dependency or a preference, and whether any constraint is standing in for logic.
3. Critical path
Ask the planner to walk the critical path verbally, activity by activity, without a printed report. For example: civils run fourteen weeks to drainage completion; drainage precedes the six-week services duct install; duct completion drives reinstatement, which runs to Completion.
The software calculates every critical path. The test is whether the planner understands the one on the screen. If the path described differs from the logic in the file, or the planner cannot describe it at all, treat the answer as red.
4. Resources
Ask which packages are resource-loaded and what the critical resource assumptions are. An unresourced programme can be made to fit any timescale by assuming unlimited labour and plant. At peak, how many of each key trade are needed, and has the contractor confirmed they are available? Named subcontractors, committed resources and stated productivity make the programme credible.
5. Revision history
Under NEC4 the baseline is the Accepted Programme, not the tender programme. Ask what has changed since it was last accepted: which activities were resequenced, which durations were revised for actual productivity, which TRAs have been used or released. Revised programmes are due at the intervals in Contract Data, when instructed, and when the Contractor chooses (cl.32.2), so also check those intervals have been met.
Unchanged logic is legitimate where the works are running to plan. Where progress or conditions have changed, a programme that has only been status-updated has not been maintained.
6. Compensation events
Ask for the compensation event log alongside the programme and check they agree. Implemented events should appear in the current revised programme, because a revised programme shows the effect of implemented compensation events (cl.32.1). Notified and quoted events are not normally in the Accepted Programme, so their absence is not a fault. What matters is that each log entry states its programme effect and that the log and the programme tell the same story.
Findings here are an implemented event with no trace in the programme, or a log showing delay the programme does not. Also check notification dates against the eight-week limit in cl.61.3, as a late-notified event may be time-barred.
7. Weather
Under NEC4, weather is a compensation event only if it is rarer than a once-in-ten-year event, measured against the weather data and place stated in Contract Data (cl.60.1(13)). Anything less severe is the Contractor's risk. The programme must therefore carry its own allowance for ordinary bad weather: non-working days in the calendar, longer durations on weather-sensitive work such as earthworks, concrete pours and surfacing, or TRAs.
Ask for the weather basis (for example Met Office historic records for the nearest station) and which activities are treated as weather-sensitive. A programme that assumes twelve months of fully workable weather is not credible on any exposed site.
8. Access
Access is a separate matter from weather. Ask for each access dependency, who provides it and the date it is needed: Access Dates in Contract Data, highway possessions and lane closures, utility diversions, landowner and environmental consents, third-party permits. Late access from the Client may be a compensation event. A delay by a third party usually sits with the Contractor unless the contract says otherwise, so check Contract Data and the Scope.
9. Procurement lead times
Ask for the three or four items with the longest lead times and where they sit relative to the critical path. On highways work these include structures bearings and expansion joints, signs and gantries, vehicle restraint systems and ITS equipment; on energy and process work, switchgear and transformers. Durations should rest on supplier quotes or tracked market data, and should include design acceptance and client review time. A near-critical long-lead item belongs in the risk register as well as the programme.
10. Commissioning to Completion
This question has two parts. First, commissioning logic: which systems must be commissioned before others, what the hold points are, and what the basis is for the integrated testing duration.
Second, Completion. NEC4 uses Completion as defined in the contract, followed by the defects correction period; JCT uses practical completion. Ask what the Scope requires for Completion, such as O&M documentation, as-built records, the health and safety file, training and statutory approvals, and where each appears as an activity. A single Completion milestone with nothing before it has not been planned to the end.
Scoring the answers
Score each answer green (specific and consistent with the programme data), amber (vague or incomplete, no contradiction) or red (contradicts the programme data, or cannot be answered). The questions are not equal. Logic (2), critical path (3) and compensation events (6) are gating, because they decide whether the programme can be relied on. The other seven are advisory: they shape the next revision.
Contradictions need care. Be specific and use the same activities in both halves. "The programme shows mechanical installation starting when the structural frame finishes. You have described it starting on level 1 while steel is still going up on level 3. Which is right, and if it is the second, where is that in the logic?" Either the programme overstates the sequence and the date is cautious, or the description is wrong and the date is optimistic. Both change the answer, so score logic red until the file is corrected. Specific contradictions invite specific explanations.
Turning the score into a decision
Under NEC4 cl.31.3 the Project Manager accepts the programme or notifies the reasons for not accepting it within two weeks. The reasons are limited to the grounds listed in the clause: the plans shown are not practicable, the programme omits information the contract requires, it does not represent the Contractor's plans realistically, or it does not comply with the Scope. NEC4 has no acceptance with conditions, and a preference or a wish for more detail is not a ground. If the Project Manager does not reply in time, the Contractor can notify, and after one further week the programme is treated as accepted. Hold the meeting in the first week.
Apply the scorecard in this order. First, any gating item red: notify reasons for non-acceptance, name the ground and say what evidence would resolve it. A logic answer that contradicts the file engages the realistic-plans ground. Second, any gating item amber and none red: put the question in writing before the end of week two and treat an unresolved answer as red. Third, all gating items green: accept, and record advisory ambers and reds as requests for the next revised programme, raising an early warning under cl.15 where one threatens Completion. Fourth, an advisory item red on its own: it is a ground only if the contract requires that information or it makes the programme unrealistic; otherwise accept and ask for it next time.
Accept against the evidence that exists, not a theoretical ideal. Frame a non-acceptance notice as a specification ("we need the commissioning sequence developed to this level") and the revision is more productive.
What the answers feed into
On a QSRA we start from the accepted programme after a schedule health pass, then test the Completion Date as a confidence level. Answers to these questions set the duration ranges and the risks, and show whether time risk is in the TRAs or hidden in durations. Hidden time risk makes the date look safer than it is, so we resolve it before modelling.