What NEC4, FIDIC, JCT and the US Forms Actually Require of Your Programme

Six standard forms, six different answers to the same question: what must the programme actually show?

Under NEC4, clause 50.5 lets the Project Manager retain one quarter of the Price for Work Done to Date until a compliant first programme arrives. Under FIDIC’s 2017 forms, the programme must carry logic links, early and late dates, float and the critical path, across eleven separate sub-requirements. On US federal construction the specification goes further still, allowing the whole schedule only two open ends and prohibiting negative lags outright. Under AIA A201, the most widely used US private-sector form, the word “float” does not appear anywhere in the document. Under the JCT Design and Build contract, there is no obligation to produce a programme at all.

Most planners work to a house standard and assume the contract broadly agrees with it. If you are reviewing a programme against good practice rather than against the contract, start with construction schedule analysis and how to review a contractor’s programme. These forms disagree with each other far more than they disagree with good practice.

This article says programme throughout, because that is the word the NEC, FIDIC and JCT forms use. The US forms say schedule, and the two US sections below follow them.

The short version

The UK and international forms

	NEC4 ECC	FIDIC 2017 (Red, Yellow, Silver)	JCT SBC/Q 2016	JCT Design and Build 2016
Clause	31.2	8.3	2.9.1.2	none
Programme required?	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Logic links required?	Implied by order and timing	Yes, expressly	No	No
Float shown?	Yes, expressly	Yes, expressly	No	No
Critical path shown?	No	Yes, expressly	Only if the Contract Particulars say so	No
Time risk allowances?	Yes, expressly	No	No	No
Resources per operation?	Yes	In the supporting report	No	No
Acceptance mechanism	PM notifies acceptance or reasons within 2 weeks, cl 31.3; four stated grounds for refusal	Engineer Reviews; silence for 21 days (initial) or 14 days (revised) is deemed no-objection	None	None
Sanction for non-compliance	A quarter of payment retained (cl 50.5); PM assesses your compensation events off their own programme (cl 64.2)	Engineer may reject; programme has contractual standing	None. Clause 2.9.3 removes obligation	None

The US forms

	AIA A201-2017	FAR 52.236-15	UFGS 01 32 01.00 10
Applies to	US private-sector building work	Federal fixed-price construction	USACE, NAVFAC and AFCEC projects
Clause	3.10.1	(a) to (c)	A Division 01 specification section
Programme required?	Yes	Yes, within five days	Yes, preliminary, initial, then monthly
Logic links required?	No	No	Yes. Only two open ends permitted in the whole schedule
Float shown?	No. The word does not appear in the form	No	Yes, and the spec states who owns it
Critical path shown?	No	No	Yes, defined as Longest Path
Time risk allowances?	No	No	No
Resources per operation?	No	No	Cost loading on every activity; workers-per-day code if directed
Acceptance mechanism	Submitted for the Owner’s and Architect’s information, not approval	Submitted to the Contracting Officer for approval	Government approval of each submission, with a monthly update meeting
Sanction for non-compliance	None. The seven grounds for withholding certification in 9.5.1 do not include the schedule	Approval of progress payments may be withheld; non-compliance is grounds for a diligence determination and default termination	Payment requests rejected until compliance; 10% of each pay request withholdable while directed revisions are missing

Read the last row of both tables first. US federal construction takes two documents, so the seven columns cover six regimes. Three of the six attach a consequence to the programme and three attach nothing at all. Of the three that bite, two reach for money: NEC4 and US federal construction. Note the JCT edition: in JCT 2024, SBC/Q keeps the master programme at 2.9 but DB uses 2.9 for site boundaries.

NEC4: the programme is a payment mechanism

NEC clause 31.2 lists what every programme submitted for acceptance must show. The list is long, and several items are unusual in that they ask for things planners often keep to themselves:

• The starting date, access dates, Key Dates and Completion Date
• Planned Completion, which is separate from the Completion Date and reveals the contractor’s terminal float
• The order and timing of the operations, and of the work of the Client and Others
• Provisions for float, time risk allowances, health and safety requirements and the contract procedures
• The dates the contractor will need access, acceptances, Plant and Materials, and information from Others
• For each operation, a statement of how the contractor plans to do the work, identifying the principal Equipment and other resources

Planned Completion shown against the Completion Date exposes the contractor’s terminal float on the face of the programme. Time risk allowances must be identified separately, which means the contingency sitting inside activity durations is meant to be visible rather than buried.

Then clause 50.5 attaches money to it. Where no programme is identified in the Contract Data, one quarter of the Price for Work Done to Date is retained in every assessment until the contractor submits a first programme “showing the information which the contract requires”. Submitting something is not enough. It has to show the 31.2 list.

What this means in practice

A programme that omits time risk allowances or does not show planned Completion is not merely a weak programme under NEC4. It is arguably not a compliant first programme, and the retention mechanism in 50.5 is available to the Project Manager until it is.

Clause 31.3 then gives the Project Manager two weeks to notify acceptance or the reasons for refusing it, and it closes the list of reasons: the Contractor’s plans are not practicable, the programme does not show the information the contract requires, it does not represent the Contractor’s plans realistically, or it does not comply with the Scope. Nothing else is a valid ground.

The deemed-acceptance backstop is narrower than usually described. Silence for three weeks is not enough. If the Project Manager does not respond within the two weeks, the Contractor may notify that failure, and only if it then continues a further week is the programme treated as accepted. Notifying is optional and it is what starts that week. A contractor who waits quietly gets nothing.

NEC3 users are covered by the same requirement, at clause 50.3, in near-identical wording. The 31.2 content list is materially the same between NEC3 and NEC4. The differences are terminology: NEC3’s Employer and Works Information became NEC4’s Client and Scope. NEC4 adds one item, that the programme is “in the form stated in the Scope”.

There is a second sanction, and for many contractors it bites harder than the money. Under clause 64.2, where there is no Accepted Programme, or the Contractor has not submitted one as the contract requires, or the Project Manager has not accepted it for one of the stated reasons, the Project Manager assesses the programme for the remaining work and uses that in assessing the compensation event. You do not simply lose a payment percentage. You lose control of the baseline your own compensation events are valued against.

The other reason the programme matters under NEC is clause 63.5, which assesses each compensation event against the Accepted Programme. The January 2019 amendments sharpened this, requiring the assessment to account for events that happened between the date of the Accepted Programme and the dividing date. A stale Accepted Programme therefore complicates every compensation event that follows it.

FIDIC 2017: the longest list, and a trapdoor in the guidance

Sub-Clause 8.3 in the FIDIC 2017 second editions runs to eleven lettered sub-requirements. The Red, Yellow and Silver Books carry substantively the same list, with the reviewer changing from the Engineer to the Employer under Silver.

Silver carries one further difference. It opens its revised-programme sentence with “Unless otherwise stated in the Particular Conditions”, a qualifier Red and Yellow do not have. Under Silver, the duty to keep the programme current can be switched off by the Particular Conditions entirely.

Sub-paragraph (g) is the one that catches most programmes:

all activities (to the level of detail specified in the Specification), logically linked and showing the earliest and latest start and finish dates for each activity, the float (if any), and the critical path(s)

That single sub-paragraph asks for four things at once: complete logic, both early and late date sets, float, and an identified critical path. A programme with open ends does not satisfy it. Neither does one that shows early dates only. Both are also DCMA 14-point failures, and the float it asks for is the total float the source tool calculates.

The other ten run from the Commencement Date and site access through the order of the works, review periods, testing sequence, rest days, key delivery dates and progress reporting, to a supporting report on methods, resources and proposals to overcome delay.

Here is the part that surprises people who know the clause well. FIDIC’s own Guidance invites Employers to cut the list back. The guidance accompanying the Yellow Book suggests that for less complex projects, the Employer may consider simplifying the programme requirements by replacing sub-paragraphs (a) to (k) with the shorter (a) to (d) list from the 1999 first edition.

So a project running on FIDIC 2017 may legitimately owe a far lighter programme than the general conditions suggest, and the only way to know is to read the Particular Conditions.

One further edition trap. The 2017 books were reprinted in 2022 with three sets of amendments incorporated, and FIDIC treats the 2022 reprint as the definitive issue. That reprint touches 8.3 once: in the final paragraph, “the Programme” becomes “any programme”, which widens the Engineer’s power to reject. The (a) to (k) list itself is unchanged.

US federal construction: the longest list in this article

The private-sector form asks for less than JCT does. Federal construction asks for more than FIDIC does.

FAR 52.236-15 gives the Contracting Officer a schedule within five days of the work commencing, “showing the order in which the Contractor proposes to perform the work”, and attaches the sanction in the same paragraph: where the contractor fails to submit in time, the Contracting Officer “may withhold approval of progress payments until the Contractor submits the required schedule”. Paragraph (c) goes further, making non-compliance grounds for a determination that the contractor is not prosecuting the work with sufficient diligence, which opens the route to default termination. Three short paragraphs, last revised in 1984, and more teeth than the whole of JCT clause 2.9.

The clause is optional. FAR 36.515 has the Contracting Officer “may insert” it where a fixed-price construction contract is contemplated, the value exceeds the simplified acquisition threshold, and the work runs beyond 60 days.

None of the content requirements are in that clause. They sit in Division 01 of the specification, which on Army Corps, NAVFAC and Air Force work means UFGS 01 32 01.00 10, Project Schedule, currently the August 2026 edition. Across 24 pages it is the most prescriptive programme requirement in this article by a wide margin:

• Only two open-ended activities in the whole schedule. The first has no predecessor, the last has no successor, and every other activity needs logic at both ends (§3.3.11)
• Leads (negative lags) prohibited outright, and start-to-finish relationships prohibited (§3.3.16)
• Retained logic mandated. Software features that sever the predecessor-successor tie when a successor starts early, which P6 calls progress override, are expressly not allowed (§3.3.17)
• Mandatory constraints that ignore or affect network logic prohibited, along with artificial “zero free float” or “zero total float” constraints (§3.3.8)
• The critical path defined as Longest Path rather than by a total float threshold, as one of 11 mandatory P6 settings (§3.12)
• The native scheduling file submitted every month, with .xer given as the worked example (§3.5.1)

Anyone who runs a DCMA 14-point check will recognise that list. The difference is that on a federal job these are not good-practice thresholds to be argued over. They are specification compliance, and §3.2.3 prices them. Failure to meet the specification “may result in the disapproval of the preliminary, initial, or periodic schedule updates and subsequent rejection of payment requests until compliance is met”. Where the Contracting Officer has directed schedule revisions and they have not appeared in a later update, the spec allows a withholding of 10% of the pay request from every payment period until they do.

What this means in practice

Both mechanisms withhold until the contractor cures, so the difference is in the trigger. NEC4’s quarter-retention has one trigger: the absence of a compliant first programme. Cure it once and the mechanism is spent for the rest of the job. The UFGS withholding attaches to any directed revision that has not appeared in a later update, so it can arm again at any point. A contractor can satisfy it in March and be exposed to it afresh in September.

Section 3.10 then settles float ownership in writing, which none of NEC4, FIDIC or JCT does: float “belongs to the Project and is available for Contractor and Government use”, covering both activity float and project float. The other forms leave it open, which is why the question gets argued from the SCL Protocol instead.

JCT: asks for very little, and then says it does not count

JCT SBC/Q requires a master programme at clause 2.9.1.2. The content requirement is a single item, and even that is optional:

its master programme for the execution of the Works identifying the critical paths, where so required by the Contract Particulars

The Contract Particulars entry is a delete-as-applicable line: critical paths are or are not required to be shown. Nothing else is specified. No logic, no float, no calendars, no resources.

Clause 2.9.3 then goes further. Nothing in the master programme, or any amendment or revision of it, imposes any obligation beyond those imposed by the Contract Documents. Departing from the programme is not, by itself, a breach.

Under the JCT Design and Build contract there is no programme obligation at all. The word “programme” appears once in the whole of the DB conditions, in a supplemental provision encouraging the contractor to propose cost savings. “Master programme” and “critical path” do not appear. This holds in both the 2016 and the 2024 editions.

Thomas Barnes & Sons plc v Blackburn with Darwen BC [2022] EWHC 2598 (TCC) shows what that costs when delay has to be proved. The bus station contract ran on JCT SBC/Q 2011 as amended. HHJ Stephen Davies awarded an extension of time to 10 August 2015, against the 8 November claimed, and prolongation for only 27 days beyond what was already granted. He preferred the expert who made “a detailed and conscientious analysis by reference to the contemporaneous documents” over the one whose “retrospective longest path analysis” reverse-engineered a preformed view. Both read the documents. Only one started from them.

Where the form specifies almost nothing about programme content, what the programme showed is not a contractual question but an evidential one, argued years later by experts who disagree.

That is not a drafting oversight but a different philosophy about who owns method and sequence. It does mean a JCT DB project has whatever programme discipline the parties write into the Employer’s Requirements, and no more.

AIA A201: the word float does not appear

AIA A201-2017 is the most widely used set of general conditions in US private-sector building work, and clause 3.10.1 asks for three things. The contractor submits, promptly after award, a construction schedule containing:

(1) the date of commencement of the Work, interim schedule milestone dates, and the date of Substantial Completion; (2) an apportionment of the Work by construction activity; and (3) the time required for completion of each portion of the Work

Dates, a breakdown by activity, and a duration against each. The schedule must not exceed the contract time limits and must be “revised at appropriate intervals”. That is the entire content requirement.

The schedule goes to the Owner and Architect for their information, so there is no approval step, no acceptance mechanism, and nothing resembling NEC4’s closed list of grounds for refusal. Across the 38 pages of A201-2017 the words float, critical path, network and predecessor do not appear once, and nothing requires the schedule to be logic-driven. A bar chart with no relationships in it satisfies clause 3.10.1 on its face.

There is no sanction either. Clause 9.5.1 lets the Architect withhold certification on seven stated grounds, running from defective work not remedied through to repeated failure to carry out the work in accordance with the Contract Documents. Failure to submit or update the construction schedule is not one of them. The submittal schedule at 3.10.2 does carry a consequence: a contractor who ignores that one loses entitlement to any more time or money arising from the Architect’s review periods. The document attaches a price to late paperwork and none to an unbuildable programme.

Clause 3.10.3 then asks the contractor to perform the work “in general accordance with the most recent schedules submitted”. That is the only performance obligation tied to the schedule anywhere in the form, and “in general accordance” is doing a lot of work in it.

A contractor can finish a federal job and start a private one in the same city, and go from the strictest schedule specification in this article to the loosest.

What to do with this

Check the edition and the amendments before quoting a clause. NEC4 has been amended three times, in January 2019, October 2020 and January 2023. The FIDIC 2017 books have a 2022 reprint. JCT moved from 2016 to 2024. UFGS 01 32 01.00 10 was reissued in August 2026, superseding the February 2023 edition. Quoting a superseded printing at a contract administrator is an avoidable way to lose an argument.

On a US job, the programme requirements are probably not in the contract. Between them, AIA A201 and the FAR clause specify almost nothing about content. What the schedule has to contain sits in Division 01 of the specification, and on federal work that document is longer and stricter than any set of general conditions in this article. Reading the general conditions and stopping there will tell you close to the opposite of the truth.

Read the Particular Conditions, the Contract Particulars and the Z clauses before the general conditions. On every form here the amendments decide the answer. FIDIC actively recommends one such amendment. A programme requirement in the standard form may not survive into the contract you are actually working under.

Watch the clause numbering across a suite. Numbers repeat between contracts in the same family. The NEC October 2020 amendments change a “clause 31.2”, but it is the Term Service Subcontract’s, not the ECC’s. Reading an amendment schedule without checking which contract’s table you are in produces a confident wrong answer.

Judge your programme against the contract, then against good practice, and keep the two separate. DCMA 14-point, the SCL Protocol and the CIOB guidance describe a good programme. NEC4 31.2, FIDIC 8.3 and UFGS 01 32 01.00 10 describe what your contract obliges you to produce. They overlap, and on a federal job the overlap is close to total, because the UFGS writes several DCMA checks straight into the specification. Everywhere else, treat them as two separate reviews with two separate consequences. Where the gap between them turns into time and money, that is an extension of time claim.

References

Source	Clause	Point
NEC4 Engineering and Construction Contract (June 2017, as amended)	31.2, 31.3, 32, 50.5, 63.5, 64.2	Programme content, acceptance, retention, PM-assessed programme
NEC3 Engineering and Construction Contract (3rd ed. 2005)	31.2, 50.3	Same content list, same retention
FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction, 2nd ed. 2017 (Red Book, reprinted 2022)	8.3	Eleven sub-requirements
FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Plant and Design-Build, 2nd ed. 2017 (Yellow Book)	8.3 and accompanying Guidance	Guidance on reverting to the 1999 list
JCT Standard Building Contract With Quantities 2016 and 2024	2.9.1.2, 2.9.3	Master programme, critical paths optional
JCT Design and Build Contract 2016 and 2024	none	No programme obligation
AIA A201-2017, General Conditions of the Contract for Construction	3.10.1, 3.10.2, 3.10.3, 9.5.1	Three-item content list; submitted for information; schedule absent from the withholding grounds
FAR 52.236-15, Schedules for Construction Contracts (APR 1984), prescribed by FAR 36.515	(a) to (c)	Five-day submission; progress payments withheld; diligence determination
UFGS 01 32 01.00 10, Project Schedule (August 2026, superseding February 2023)	3.2.3, 3.3.8, 3.3.11, 3.3.16, 3.3.17, 3.5.1, 3.10, 3.12	Open ends, leads, SF, retained logic, constraints, native-file submission, float ownership, payment withholding
Thomas Barnes & Sons plc v Blackburn with Darwen BC [2022] EWHC 2598 (TCC), HHJ Stephen Davies	JCT SBC/Q 2011 as amended	Delay proved by contemporaneous records, not by the programme
Obrascon Huarte Lain SA v HM Attorney General for Gibraltar [2014] EWHC 1028 (TCC), Akenhead J	FIDIC Yellow Book 1999	Four attempts at a compliant initial programme; termination upheld