For UK contractors, fit-out firms and quantity surveyors
Somebody told you to do it. You did it. Whether you get paid for it depends almost entirely on what happened in the next seven days.
A verbal instruction, on its own, is worth very little. Both of the contract families used on UK fit-out work say so, in different ways and with different consequences.
JCT gives you a procedure to convert it. NEC does not recognise it at all. And both of them put the clock on you rather than on the person who did the instructing — which is the part that catches people out, because it feels like the other side's problem.
Clause 3.12 of the Standard Building Contract sets out what happens when an instruction is given otherwise than in writing. It has no immediate effect. You confirm it in writing within 7 days. If the Architect or Contract Administrator does not dissent within 7 days of receiving your confirmation, the instruction takes effect at the end of that second period.
Two clocks, seven days each. The Design and Build form carries an equivalent provision for Employer's Instructions; the numbering differs, so check yours.
The burden sits with you. The person who gave the instruction can do nothing at all and it still becomes valid — but only if you wrote it up. Silence from them is not a problem. Silence from you is the whole problem.
NEC does not have a confirmation procedure, because it does not accept the premise. Clause 13.1 requires every communication the contract calls for to be in a form which can be read, copied and recorded. A verbal instruction is therefore not an instruction. There is nothing to confirm.
What NEC has instead is a deadline, and it is the hardest one in either family. Under clause 61.3, if you do not notify a compensation event within eight weeks of becoming aware of it, the Prices, the Completion Date and the Key Dates are not changed.
That is binary. Inside eight weeks or outside it, with nothing in between — so on an NEC4 job an undocumented verbal instruction is worth exactly nothing once eight weeks have passed, however obviously it happened and however well everyone remembers it.
Eight fields. The first six are administration and take a minute; the seventh is the one that decides whether the document is worth anything a year later.
| Field | Why | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Date and time | Approximate time is fine and better than none. It anchors the instruction to a day on the programme. |
| 2 | Who gave it | A name and a role. The client asked for it is not a record — a person asked for it. |
| 3 | Who received it | Your side of the conversation, by name. They may have left the company by final account. |
| 4 | Where | On site, by telephone, on a call. It tells a reader what kind of conversation it was. |
| 5 | The contract and project | So the document can be filed against the right job by someone who was not involved. |
| 6 | The confirming provision | Naming the clause tells the other side which clock has started, which is the point of sending it. |
| 7 | The instruction itself | In enough detail that a stranger could price it. This is the field that fails — move the partition is not pricable; move the partition on gridline C from 3.2m to 4.1m, plasterboard both faces, make good is. |
| 8 | Cost and programme | The number if you have it, or a clear statement that it follows. An instruction confirmed with no commercial position attached invites the argument you are trying to avoid. |
Written as an email rather than a form, because that is how it actually gets sent — the same afternoon, from a phone, before the detail goes.
Subject: Confirmation of verbal instruction — CVI [nn] — [project] [Name], I am confirming in writing an instruction given verbally. Project [project name and contract reference] CVI number [nn] Instructed by [name, role] Received by [name, role] Date and time [date, approximate time] Place [on site / by telephone / on a call] INSTRUCTION [What you were told to do, in enough detail that somebody who was not there could price it. Use the words that were used. If a drawing or a level or a product was named, name it here.] COST AND PROGRAMME [Either: "We estimate the effect at £[x] and [n] days, to be confirmed in our formal submission." Or: "The cost and programme effect will follow separately."] This confirmation is given under the Contract. Unless you notify us of your dissent within 7 days of receipt, the instruction takes effect at the end of that period. [Your name] [Company] [Date]
Change the wording to suit your contract and your relationship. The structure is the part worth keeping: who, when, where, what, and the clock.
A CVI converts a verbal instruction into a valid one. It does not settle what the change is worth — the valuation is a separate argument under separate rules, and confirming an instruction is not agreeing a price for it.
It also does not help with the change nobody confirmed. That is the one that turns up at final account with two honest recollections and no document, and it is the reason this page exists at all.
This page describes how these contracts commonly work. It is not legal advice, and clause numbering moves between editions and between forms — check the contract you actually signed. The provisions referred to are the Standard Building Contract at clause 3.12 and NEC4 at clauses 13.1 and 61.3. Primary sources: jctltd.co.uk and neccontract.com.
If something on this page is wrong, or right but not how it works where you are, I would rather hear it than not. Twenty minutes, no slides, and a reply from the person who wrote it.
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