You Sent a Graduate to Fight a Veteran. You Lost.

The conversation happens in some form on almost every project. Resources are stretched, the diary is full, and someone needs to be assigned to a new contract. The project looks manageable. Good client, reasonable scope, standard form. Nothing that should require significant senior resource.

"It's a straightforward job. Our graduate can handle it."

The client, meanwhile, made a different resourcing decision. They fielded a QS with fifteen years of experience, a detailed working knowledge of the JCT Design and Build form, and two adjudications behind her. Not in front of her. Behind her. She had been through the process, understood what an adjudicator looks for, and knew from direct experience how a well-run commercial programme differs from one that looks clean on the surface but is haemorrhaging margin invisibly.

Your graduate was twelve months post-qualification. Bright, willing, thorough. He did everything he had been taught. He submitted applications on time. He kept the variation register updated. He attended every meeting and wrote up his notes conscientiously.

The problem was not his effort or his character. The problem was that he did not know he was in a commercial battle. He thought he was in an administrative process. And the person sitting across the table from him knew exactly what he didn't know, and used it with considerable precision.

By month six, the project was carrying £65,000 of unrecognised exposure. An experienced QS would have spotted most of it in week two.

This is not a story about a graduate failing. It is a story about a management decision that put the wrong person in the wrong seat, without the oversight to compensate for it.

What the Veteran Knew That the Graduate Didn't

The experience gap in commercial management is not primarily about technical knowledge. Graduates can measure accurately. They can value work correctly. They can submit applications in the right format to the right deadline. They can operate the mechanics of the contract with competence and diligence.

What they cannot do, because it comes only from having been in the room when it happens, is recognise when a routine interaction is functioning as a commercial manoeuvre.

Commercial success on a contested project is driven by pattern recognition as much as process. Experienced QSs understand when something is turning into a dispute before it has been labelled as one. They read tone, timing and framing, not just formal notices. A lot of the positioning happens in exactly those informal registers, in the language of a progress meeting or the draft of a set of minutes, and that is where the graduate was consistently outmatched.

The client's QS knew how to reject a variation in a way that made it look like a valuation disagreement rather than a contractual dispute. The distinction matters enormously. A valuation disagreement is a technical conversation about quantum that can be resolved by measurement. A question about whether an event constitutes an instruction or a Change to the Employer's Requirements at all is a different category of conversation - one that requires notice procedures, entitlement analysis and, potentially, formal dispute resolution. Framing the former as the latter, or vice versa, shifts the procedural ground without anything explicit being stated.

She knew how to draft meeting minutes. Not to record what was said, but to record what was said in a way that quietly embedded assumptions about the contractual position that favoured her client. Minutes that describe a preliminary claim as "noted for further discussion" rather than "submitted as a variation notice" have shifted the evidential position without anyone raising their voice. The contractor signs off the minutes. The position is established. In adjudication, those minutes frequently become quasi-evidence - silence on a disputed point, or soft language where challenge was needed, can be read as acceptance over time.

She knew where the leverage sits in the JCT Design and Build form. Which provisions carry risk if not managed carefully. Which notification requirements matter and how courts and adjudicators have interpreted them. Which positions, if conceded in a progress meeting, create precedents that carry forward to the final account.

Your graduate was recording the present. She was building the future.

The Notice Problem: Harder Than It Looks

This is where the competence gap has consequences that go beyond operational inconvenience and into contractual exposure - and where it is worth being precise, because the legal position under JCT Design and Build is more nuanced than it is often presented.

Under the JCT DB 2016 and 2024 forms, the contractor's entitlement to loss and expense under clause 4.19 is stated to be conditional on compliance with clause 4.20 - the notification obligation. The contractor "shall notify the Employer as soon as the likely effect of a Relevant Matter on regular progress becomes, or should have become, reasonably apparent." That notification must be accompanied by, or promptly followed by, an initial assessment.

Whether that notification requirement operates as a hard condition precedent - meaning failure to notify extinguishes entitlement entirely - is contested. The Scottish Court of Session in FES Ltd v HFD Construction Group Ltd confirmed it as a condition precedent under equivalent SBCC wording, and the prevailing view among English practitioners is that the JCT DB drafting produces the same result. The JCT drafting committee itself has suggested that was not the intention, and the 2024 edition left the ambiguity unresolved. The honest position is that it is strongly arguable as a condition precedent, not universally settled - and that ambiguity is not a reason to treat notification casually.

What is clear and consistent across the case law is this: poor, late or absent notification materially weakens recovery. Where notification is missing, entitlement is at best uncertain and at worst lost. An adjudicator assessing a poorly notified loss and expense claim is not working with a full hand of cards on the contractor's behalf. They are working with what the file contains, and filling gaps is not their function.

For an extension of time under clause 2.26, the position is similarly demanding in practice. Failure to give timely notice of a Relevant Event does not automatically extinguish the entitlement in the way NEC's eight-week time bar does - JCT is not a strict time-bar contract in that sense. But where the employer cannot take action to prevent or lessen delay because the notice arrived too late, entitlement to the full extension can be limited. The Employer's ability to argue that timely notice would have allowed mitigation is a real and frequently deployed argument.

A graduate who has been taught to measure and value accurately will apply those skills diligently. What they may not yet have learned is that the question of whether an event gives rise to loss and expense entitlement is often not a measurement problem. It is a characterisation problem, a notice problem and a substantiation problem - and all three require experience to manage well.

The Design Responsibility Dimension

On a JCT Design and Build contract, there is an additional layer of complexity that the competence mismatch makes particularly dangerous: the contested boundary between a Change to the Employer's Requirements and design development within the Contractor's Proposals.

Under the unamended JCT DB form, a Change is defined in clause 5.1 as an alteration or modification of the design, quantity or quality of the works including the addition, omission or substitution of any work. Critically, it must involve an amendment to the Employer's Requirements. If the scope change arises within the Contractor's Proposals - if it represents the contractor developing or completing design they were already obliged to produce - it is not a Change. It is design development, and it falls within the contractor's existing obligation. No additional time or money.

The boundary between these two categories is one of the most actively contested areas in JCT Design and Build disputes. The Employer's Requirements may be expressed at a high level, leaving significant design detail to be developed by the contractor. Where that development leads to scope that the contractor believes exceeds what was intended, the question of whether the excess falls within the Contractor's Proposals or constitutes a Change to the Employer's Requirements is a matter of contract interpretation that experienced practitioners navigate carefully and beginners rarely see coming.

An experienced QS on the client side will manage this boundary with precision - framing scope changes as design development wherever possible, resisting the contractor's characterisation of events as Changes, and exploiting ambiguities in the Employer's Requirements to resist entitlement. A graduate who has not previously encountered this battleground will often not recognise what is happening until the pattern is established and the positions have hardened.

There is a further complication where the contract has been amended - as it frequently is - to extend the contractor's design responsibility beyond the unamended form. Many bespoke amendments make the contractor responsible for the entirety of the design, including any design in the Employer's Requirements. Under those terms, the scope of what constitutes design development (contractor's risk) widens significantly, and the scope of what constitutes a Change to the Employer's Requirements narrows correspondingly. Identifying the contractual position on this requires someone who has read the amendments, understood their effect and is tracking the live scope against that framework from day one.

Why "Straightforward" Projects Are the Riskiest

There is a counterintuitive but well-established pattern in construction commercial management: the projects where the most money is lost quietly are not the complex, high-profile ones that attract senior oversight and close monitoring. They are the ones described as straightforward at the outset and therefore not watched carefully enough.

Complex projects generate attention. Problems surface early because people are looking. Senior resource is assigned because the risk is visible. The commercial team knows it is operating in a difficult environment and behaves accordingly.

The straightforward project generates complacency. It sits at the back of the senior QS's weekly call, briefly discussed before moving on to the ones causing visible problems. The graduate runs it largely independently. Nobody asks hard questions about the commercial position until month eight, when the CVR shows an unexpected deterioration that takes several more months to fully understand.

The £4 million JCT Design and Build with an experienced client was not a straightforward project. It never was. It was a project that looked uncomplicated because the scope was clean and the relationship was good - neither of which has any bearing on the sophistication of the commercial programme being run by the client's commercial team.

Good client relationships and contested commercial management are not mutually exclusive. In some cases, the relationship is itself a mechanism for extracting concessions, because the contractor's desire to preserve it creates reluctance to challenge positions that should be challenged. A client QS who understands this operates behind the warmth of the relationship rather than in spite of it.

The Experience-to-Exposure Audit

Resourcing decisions in most contracting businesses are made on the basis of availability rather than risk. Who is free? Who can start on Monday? The answer to those questions determines which QS goes on which project, and the consequences only become visible months later.

The audit reframes that decision. Instead of asking who is available, ask whether the available person is adequate for the risk profile of the contract.

Risk-rating the project. Assess each live or incoming project across the dimensions that determine commercial difficulty. Contract complexity - a lightly amended JCT Minor Works is categorically different from a heavily amended Design and Build with bespoke risk allocation and extensive design responsibility amendments. Client sophistication - a local housing association with a project manager is not the same opponent as a major developer with in-house legal and dedicated commercial resource. Contract value, which sets the quantum of exposure if commercial positions are conceded. Claims history with this client, which tells you whether the relationship will be administered professionally or combatively.

Assign a score. A £4 million Design and Build with a sophisticated developer, heavily amended contract terms and a client QS with adjudication experience is a Risk 5 project regardless of how clean the scope looks at appointment.

Rating your people. Apply the same structured thinking to commercial team members. Years of experience is a starting point, but the more relevant dimensions are dispute history - have they seen a formal notice procedure, been through a payment dispute, managed a compensation event programme, participated in an adjudication? - and live contract knowledge that goes beyond basic familiarity. There is a meaningful difference between knowing that notice provisions matter and being able to identify, in a live commercial situation, that the window for a particular notification is closing.

A graduate twelve months post-qualification is an Experience Level 1. That is not a criticism. It is an accurate description of where they are in a development trajectory that takes years.

The red flag rule. Where the project risk rating materially exceeds the QS experience rating, the business is commercially exposed on that project. The mismatch is a leading indicator of margin failure. Address it through reallocation, structured senior oversight, or, where the project genuinely requires it, external resource.

The audit should not be a one-time exercise at project start. Risk profiles change. A project that was a Risk 2 at appointment can become a Risk 4 six months later if the scope deteriorates, the programme comes under pressure or the client's commercial behaviour changes. The team assigned at month one may not be adequate for the project that exists at month six.

What Adequate Oversight Actually Means

The response to a competence mismatch is not always to replace the graduate. In many cases, structured senior oversight is the right answer - and structured oversight is not the same as the brief weekly call that most straightforward projects receive.

Adequate oversight means a senior QS reviewing the commercial file at regular intervals in sufficient depth to identify developing problems rather than receiving a verbal summary. It means being present - or at minimum, closely briefed - for significant client-facing commercial interactions. It means reviewing correspondence before it goes out, because the framing of a letter about a disputed scope item determines the legal position it establishes.

It also means actively teaching the graduate what they are not yet capable of seeing independently. The fifteen-year veteran across the table accumulated her skills through exactly the kind of situations your graduate is currently navigating. The difference is that she navigated them as part of a team where someone more experienced was reviewing her work and explaining what was actually happening beneath the surface of what appeared to be happening.

If your commercial team structure does not include that feedback loop, the experience gap between your team and a sophisticated client's commercial resource will not close through time alone.

The Resourcing Decision Is a Commercial Decision

The "our graduate can handle it" call feels like a resourcing decision. It presents itself as a practical response to capacity constraints, a reasonable development opportunity and an appropriate match for what looks like a manageable project.

It is a commercial decision. It determines how much margin you are willing to put at risk on the basis that the project looks uncomplicated. And like every commercial decision, it should be made with accurate information about the risk it carries.

The £65,000 of unrecognised exposure at month six was not bad luck. It was the predictable consequence of sending an Experience Level 1 to manage a Risk Level 5 project without adequate oversight. The client's QS did nothing improper. She managed her client's commercial position with competence and experience. The contractor funded both sides of the exercise: paying the graduate to be in the room, and paying the consequences of not having understood what was happening in it.

Anywhere the QS's experience sits materially below the contract's complexity is a fight you are financing from both ends.

The straightforward projects deserve scrutiny. Often, they are the ones nobody is watching closely enough. And the client's commercial team knows it.

Matt Lockett
Director, Norcross Commercial Management Limited
matt.lockett@norcross.uk | 07545 533968

Norcross Commercial Management Limited provides expert commercial consultancy to main contractors and subcontractors across the UK. Project basis, fixed-term or flexible retainer - whatever your business needs, when you need it.