The early warning notice (EWN) functionality is often referred to as the jewel in the crown of the New Engineering Contract 4 (NEC4) framework. Designed with dispute avoidance in mind, it is a powerful tool that promotes mutual trust, transparency and collaboration between owners and contractors, to the benefit of both parties
Early warning notices (EWNs) are commonly issued when unforeseen ground conditions, labour and materials shortages, design issues, or contractor issues are likely to increase costs, delay completion, delay meeting a key date, or impair the performance of the works in use.
An early warning notice is at the heart of ensuring that projects are delivered on time and in budget. However, standard electronic document management systems can’t handle EWN data in the same way that an integrated platform can. Only using an EDMS to handle early warning notice data is a missed opportunity to track EWN impacts in real time and mine the data for learnings that could not only increase project certainty but reduce risk, overspend, and schedule delays.
For an industry that only completes 35% of projects on or ahead of schedule, and 38% on or under the agreed budget – according to contractors surveyed in the 2022 Global Capital Projects Outlook – the savings made by those insights could run into the millions of dollars.
A real-time, holistic view of EWNs
Unlike a document management system, an integrated platform connects the dots, allowing users to view the same notice through a different project lens and understand what the notices mean, not just what they say.
All approvals, estimates, budget changes, instructions, responses, documents, images, and drawings are seamlessly drawn together to generate a complete chain of events – from cause to impact. The need for duplication is almost entirely eradicated and the potential for missed or lost communication is significantly reduced.
With all details kept in one place, “what-if” scenarios can be performed to analyse the impact on schedule risk and cost risk, simplifying yet also strengthening the process to evaluate the notice. The platform’s built-in control function can execute related changes to the schedule, budget or contracts as required.
Altogether it makes for a much more thorough decision-making process and gives owners more notice to consider whether to draw down funds from project or management reserves, or whether to alter the scope elsewhere.
Using AI to mine EWN data
The most advanced project controls platforms create knowledge libraries which capture historic project data, benchmarks and standards. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities, integrated platforms can mine historic project data, including EWN data, to identify trends and flag considerations for potential improvements across project KPIs, both on the project already under construction, and in the planning and execution of future projects.
Operating as a continuous feedback loop, the more project data added into the knowledge library, the more comprehensive and insightful the outputs become. It can also be fed into Monte Carlo analysis to give a more accurate level of confidence tailored to the owner’s risk appetite.
Coupled with human intelligence, this use of AI is helping construction companies to take a huge step forward in drawing up more realistic plans that will reduce schedule delays and curtail project overspend. It’s such a game changing tool that schedulers are beginning to run it alongside Primavera P6 just to gain those insights.
Furthermore, as updates to the project are logged by users, the platform can re-evaluate potential risks in real time, potentially providing even earlier notice to contractors and owners alike.
While novel risks – situational to each project’s unique conditions – will always exist, an integrated platform that layers past experience onto real-time plans, supports the whole project team to better identify, mitigate and minimize the impact of risk. Over time, as more data reinforces the knowledge library, users will be able to drive a major reduction in the occurrence of unforeseen risks, simultaneously improving project certainty as well as project outcomes.
Jeff Quantrill
Head of Account Management
EMEA
InEight
