What are missed claims in construction?
A missed claim is money or time the contract entitled you to that you never got: a variation raised late or never approved, a notice that missed its time bar, retention nobody chased, or wet days the extension-of-time clause would have covered. The work was real. The paperwork was not in on time.
How it shows up on a job
The extra work was real, or it rained for four days. Both notices went in late.
- The extra work was built before the variation was approved.
- The notice went in after the window the contract gave for it.
- It rained for four days and nobody logged the wet days against the record.
- The defects period ended and the retention was never chased.
What it costs
On an Australian public infrastructure program, client-approved change orders averaged 10.6% of the original contract value: $530,000 of variations to notice, price and claim on a $5 million job.
Source: Love, Irani, Smith, Regan & Liu, Production Planning & Control 28(13), 2017Retention averaged 4.9% of contract value, and smaller contractors never got it back at all on 13.1% of contracts.
Source: Pye Tait Consulting for BEIS, Retentions in the Construction Industry, 2017The Transport for NSW major contracts specification prices in 20 wet-weather days a year, and pays delay costs only when the time for completion exceeds 52 weeks, at 50% of a rate it sets. AS4000 and AS4902 give no weather relief at all.
Source: Transport for NSW, QA Specification TS 01566, Ed 5/Rev 26
What we don't know. No study measures the share of variations or claims a contractor never recovers. The size of the pot is measured; the size of the leak is not.
Every figure, worked through one $5 million job: what the five diseases cost a $5 million job. The full evidence, with every caveat: why the diseases are in this order.
How Demiton catches missed claims
When the instruction arrives or the rain starts, the clock starts. The notice is drafted and waiting before the window shuts, while the ground is still wet.
Your systems stay where they are. Demiton reads them into registers, and these are the ones that watch for missed claims:
The cures roll out one disease at a time, starting with lapsed compliance. Until each is live, the facts it runs on land in your registers, one question away in Claude or ChatGPT.
Common questions
How much does missed claims cost?
On an Australian public infrastructure program, client-approved change orders averaged 10.6% of the original contract value: $530,000 of variations to notice, price and claim on a $5 million job. No study measures the share of variations or claims a contractor never recovers. The size of the pot is measured; the size of the leak is not.
How does Demiton catch missed claims?
When the instruction arrives or the rain starts, the clock starts. The notice is drafted and waiting before the window shuts, while the ground is still wet. It reads the systems you already run, so nothing is replaced.