A variation is work, not an argument
A variation is a change to the works: something added, omitted, or done differently from what the contract drawings and the priced documents describe. You are entitled to be paid for it. The argument is almost never about whether the work was done. It is about whether anyone can prove who asked for it, when, and what it was worth.
The site instruction is where that proof is usually lost. A subcontractor, an agent or the engineer says “take that wall out and put it here instead” — and the work is done the same afternoon. By the time the final account is being argued over, the only evidence is memory, and memory belongs to whoever is no longer on the project.
The time bar is real, and it ends claims
Most standard forms do not require a dispute to kill your claim. They require you to miss a notice.
Under FIDIC’s Sub-Clause 20.1, a contractor who considers itself entitled to extra time or money must give notice to the engineer as soon as practicable, and not later than 28 days after becoming aware of the event. That notice is a condition precedent to entitlement — miss it, and the entitlement can be gone even where the work was instructed, done and measured.
So the discipline is not administrative tidiness. It is the difference between a claim and a conversation you cannot win.
What to capture, the day it happens
- What changed, against the drawing or the priced item it departs from.
- Who instructed it, by name and role, and how — on site, on the phone, in an email.
- When, with a date. Not “early in the month”.
- The trade breakdown: labour, material and plant, so the value is not a single unexplained number.
- The markup applied, at the rate the contract allows — agreed before the work proceeds, not after.
- Any time claimed, if the variation pushes the programme. Time and money are separate entitlements and are too often claimed as one.
- The written notice, issued inside the notice period, even if the instruction itself never came in writing.
That last point is the one people resist, and it is the one that saves the claim: a contractor who notified within the period is protected even when the instruction was verbal.
Where variations actually go wrong
- Verbal instruction, no notice. The commonest. The work is real and the claim is time-barred.
- Value agreed after the fact. Negotiating the price once the work is finished and the employer knows you have no alternative is not a negotiation.
- The variation buried in the claim. A line item in a progress claim is not a variation. It has its own reason, its own value and its own time entitlement.
- No register. If variations live in a WhatsApp thread and a folder of photographs, the final account is an act of reconstruction.
What this looks like in the system
Variations have their own register rather than being lines in a claim: VO number, title, reason, claimed amount, EOT and status — so the value and the time claimed against it are visible together, and anything raised but not yet accepted stays visible until it is.
+ New Variation raises one with its reason, its value and any time claimed.