In NEC vs JBCC South Africa comparisons, the difference that costs a contractor money is who may instruct you. Under the JBCC it is the principal agent. Under the NEC it is the project manager. An instruction from anyone else, including the quantity surveyor, is only safe if it came under that person's authority.
The rest of the comparison matters less on a Tuesday afternoon on site. Both forms set out how time, money and notices are handled. Both are used on South African work. But the first question in any dispute is usually whether the instruction was valid, and that turns on who gave it.
Who runs the contract under each form?
Uwe Putlitz, an architect and construction project manager who is a visiting lecturer at Wits, set out the role players on a South African project for Plumbing Africa. He calls the person who manages the implementation of the contract the contract administrator, and he names that person for each of the standard forms.
| Standard form | Who administers the contract |
|---|---|
| JBCC | Principal agent |
| NEC | Project manager |
| FIDIC | The engineer |
| GCC | Employer's agent |
The quantity surveyor is not on that list. Putlitz places the QS among the designers, alongside the architect and the engineer. The QS's information is what the buyer uses to source products and services. That is an important job. It is not the job of instructing the contractor.
The QS sent an instruction. Do I act on it?
Not until you know whose authority it carries. Under the JBCC Principal Building Agreement (edition 6.2), clause 17 deals with contract instructions. Sanjee Maharaj, an attorney who trains contractors on the agreement, makes the point in a note for ECA(SA): instructions must be properly issued by the principal agent or under their authority.
He adds a second limit. The principal agent has authority to act in terms of the agreement, but no authority to amend it. So even a genuine instruction from the right person cannot rewrite the deal. Acceleration is his example. Outside the contract's own provisions, it may need an amendment or a separate agreement on time and cost.
The PBA does allow delegation. Under clause 6, the principal agent must give the contractor notice where authority to issue contract instructions is delegated to an agent.
Under the NEC the person is the project manager. Clause 14.2 of the Engineering and Construction Contract lets the project manager delegate actions to someone else, but only after notifying the contractor. If the email came from the QS, the answer on both forms is the same in practice. Ask the contract administrator to confirm it in writing, or to show you the written authority under which the QS is acting. Then act.
The risk of not asking is simple. You carry out the work and the variation is never valued. The dispute then arrives at the payment certificate, which is where our piece on what to do when a client will not pay a certificate begins.
Where the two forms feel different on site
The JBCC is strict about form. A notice under the PBA is "a written communication, excluding social media", and clause 2.4 sets how it is deemed received: by hand, by email or by registered post. Under clause 23.4.2, a contractor who wants the completion date revised must give notice of intention to claim within 20 working days. The clock runs from when it became aware of the delay, or ought reasonably to have, and a late notice forfeits the claim.
The NEC asks more of both parties up front. A UK piece in Construction Management on recovering a slipping job notes that clause 15 makes early warning a duty on both parties. Its advice to anyone looking at a late NEC job is to ask for the early warning register. That numbering is NEC4. The NEC says the cidb recommends NEC3 for South Africa, and in NEC3 early warning is clause 16 and the register is called the risk register.
The NEC also sets its own procedure for notifying events that change time or money, and it is not the JBCC's. Under clause 61.3, in NEC3 and NEC4 alike, a contractor who does not notify a compensation event within eight weeks of becoming aware of it gets no change to the Prices or the Completion Date. Both editions exempt events the project manager should have notified, such as the project manager's own instructions, but they word the exception differently. Do not assume that 20 working days carries across from one form to the other, and read the clause in the edition your contract names.
Payment runs through the same person
Michelle Kerr of MDA Attorneys, writing in Infrastructure News, says the GCC, JBCC, NEC and FIDIC forms all set out processes for dealing with non-payment. Depending on the form, that may mean interest, suspension or, in serious cases, termination. Each carries its own procedural and notice requirements.
Her warning is that contractors keep working and sending frustrated emails instead of using the contract's machinery. On either form, that machinery runs on written notice given the way the contract says. A letter to the QS or the client's facilities manager may be read and still not count. The sequence from valuation to payment is set out in getting paid on a construction contract, and the wider set of contract questions we track is on the law resources page.
Who sees both sides of it
Instruction disputes rarely start with bad faith. A QS trying to keep a job moving sends an email, the site acts on it, and three months later nobody can say who authorised the work.
Arabella Infrastructure Solutions is a Johannesburg-based building maintenance and construction company that introduces clients to verified contractors and stays accountable for the introduction through the job. That puts it between client and contractor when an instruction is questioned, and the first question then is which form the contract uses. What that means for a contractor on the panel is on the contractor page.
On Monday
Pull the contract for your largest current job and find the name in the contract data: principal agent or project manager. Then list every instruction you have acted on this month and who sent it. For any that did not come from that person, send a short letter asking for written confirmation today.
