Correspondence, transmittals and written notice

In month four of the Westgate project, Brightwater's excavation crew hit a buried concrete foundation where the geotechnical report showed only fill. Marcus Bell phoned Robert Kaminski, the owner's project manager, who came to look that afternoon. Everyone agreed it was unexpected. Everyone agreed it would cost money. Nobody wrote anything down for nine days, by which time the old foundation had been broken out and trucked away. When Elena Vasquez later submitted the change request, the first response from the owner's side questioned whether the condition had been as extensive as Brightwater claimed, and whether written notice had been given before the conditions were disturbed. The phone call and the site visit were real, but they were not notice.

Construction contracts run on written communication. Letters, emails, platform messages and transmittals are how instructions are given, information is exchanged and rights are preserved. Some of these communications are ordinary coordination. Others are formal notices that the contract requires, in a set form, to a set person, within a set time, before a party can claim extra time or money. This lesson is about knowing the difference and getting both right.

On Westgate, the AIA A201-2017 General Conditions require that notices be in writing and set out how they are delivered. Notices of claims have stricter delivery rules than ordinary notices: they must be delivered to the designated representative in person, by certified or registered mail, or by a courier that provides proof of delivery, unless the parties have agreed otherwise, for example in an AIA E203 digital data protocol exhibit. Brightwater's first job at contract award was to read every clause that required written notice and list it, with its trigger, recipient and time limit, in the documentation matrix.

Three kinds of written communication

The danger lies in letting a contractual notice hide inside a coordination message. An email that says 'FYI, we hit some old concrete today, will keep you posted' may be enough to show the owner knew about the condition, but it may not satisfy a clause that requires notice to a named person, describing the condition and stating an intention to claim. Brightwater's rule is that anything which might lead to a change in time or money gets its own numbered letter, separate from routine traffic, sent by the method the contract requires.

Correspondence that works

Every piece of formal correspondence on Westgate follows the same pattern, whether it is a letter or a numbered message in the project platform.

• A unique number from the correspondence log, such as BWC-WGT-L-0147, and a clear subject line that names the issue, for example 'Level 2 transfer beam embed plates: RFI-112 response'.
• The date, the sender and the named recipient, with copies to those who need them. Copies are never a substitute for sending to the person the contract names.
• References to the documents involved: drawing numbers and revisions, specification sections, RFIs, earlier letters.
• The facts, in order, without opinion or exaggeration.
• What the writer wants: a decision, information, a meeting, acknowledgment, by a stated date.
• Where rights may be affected, a reservation of rights and, if required, an express statement that the letter is notice under a named clause.

Tone matters. Correspondence is often read later by people who were not there. A letter that is calm, factual and specific reads well to an adjudicator; one that is sarcastic or accusatory makes the writer look unreasonable even when the writer is right. Elena's habit is to draft a difficult letter, leave it overnight, and remove every adjective that is not a fact.

Transmittals

A transmittal is a cover record that lists what was sent, to whom, when, why and what action is required. It turns the act of sending documents into a traceable event. On Westgate every drawing issue, submittal, sample delivery and closeout package moves under a transmittal, and the platform generates most of them automatically.

The purpose field is the one most often left vague. 'For your information', 'for review and comment', 'for approval' and 'issued for construction' mean very different things, and a recipient who acts on a document sent only for information may find the sender disowns it later. Transmittals that need a response should state the response date, and the log should show when it came back.

Contractual notice: why the clauses are strict

Notice clauses exist so that the party who will pay for a problem learns about it early enough to do something: to investigate, to change the design, to stop work, to keep records of its own, or to budget. A notice given months later deprives the other party of those choices. Courts and tribunals in both countries have often enforced notice requirements strictly, treating timely notice as a condition that must be met before a claim can succeed, although outcomes depend heavily on the exact wording, on conduct and on the law of the place.

Under the A201-2017, claims must generally be initiated by written notice within 21 days after the event giving rise to the claim, or within 21 days after the claimant first recognizes the condition giving rise to it, whichever is later. Concealed or unknown conditions must be reported promptly, before they are disturbed, and no later than 14 days after first observance. Claims for additional time must include an estimate of the probable effect of the delay on the progress of the work. Supplementary conditions often change these periods, so the specific contract must always be read.

The figure shows the sequence Brightwater follows for every potential claim. The clock starts when the event happens or when Brightwater recognizes it, not when it gets round to writing. A short notice goes first, within the contract period, saying what happened and that Brightwater intends to claim. The detailed claim, with quantified time and cost and supporting records, follows later, within whatever period the contract allows. Waiting until the cost is known before giving notice is one of the most common and expensive mistakes in construction.

Writing a notice

A notice does not need to be long. It needs to be complete, clear and on time. Brightwater uses a template with seven parts.

Had Brightwater sent this notice on the day the foundation was found, Robert Kaminski could have arranged for the geotechnical engineer to inspect it, the extent could have been surveyed jointly, and the argument about how much concrete there had been would never have arisen. Since Westgate, Marcus carries the notice template on his tablet, and the rule on site is that a notice goes the same day as the phone call.

Counting the days

Time limits are expressed in different units: calendar days, working days, business days or periods tied to events such as receipt of an invoice. Each contract defines its terms, and statutes may define them differently. A notice period of five working days that spans a statutory holiday ends later than five calendar days would; a period of 21 calendar days does not stop for weekends.

Counting by hand invites mistakes, especially across holidays. Jun keeps a small script that computes deadlines for each notice clause in the documentation matrix whenever a new event is logged.

# Compute notice deadlines in working days and calendar days
from datetime import date, timedelta
holidays = {date(2026, 4, 3), date(2026, 5, 18), date(2026, 7, 1)}

def working_deadline(start, n):
    d, count = start, 0
    while count < n:
        d += timedelta(days=1)
        if d.weekday() < 5 and d not in holidays:
            count += 1
    return d

event = date(2026, 4, 2)
print('Event:', event, event.strftime('%A'))
print('5 working days:', working_deadline(event, 5))
print('14 calendar days:', event + timedelta(days=14))
print('21 calendar days:', event + timedelta(days=21))

Event: 2026-04-02 Thursday
5 working days: 2026-04-10
14 calendar days: 2026-04-16
21 calendar days: 2026-04-23

Email, platforms and proof of delivery

Most correspondence now travels by email or through a project platform. That is efficient, but it raises questions the contract may answer. Does the contract allow notices by email? To which address? When is an email received: when it is sent, when it arrives, or at the start of the next business day? Does a message posted in a platform count as delivery to the named person, or only when that person opens it? Brightwater checks these points at the start of every project and, if the contract is silent or unclear, asks the owner to agree a protocol in writing.

• Send contractual notices by the method the contract requires, even if everyone usually uses email, and keep the proof: courier receipt, registered mail slip, or a written acknowledgment.
• When email is allowed, send to the named individual, ask for acknowledgment and file the sent message with its headers.
• Do not rely on a platform's internal message for notice unless the contract or a signed protocol says platform delivery counts.
• Keep a notice log separate from the general correspondence log, with the clause, trigger date, deadline, date sent, method and acknowledgment.