What does CLOCS require in a construction logistics plan?

Under the CLOCS Standard, Version 5, the principal contractor develops, implements and maintains a project specific Construction Logistics Plan that plans and manages vehicle movements into and out of the project. The client must make sure the project team develops, implements and monitors one, and the plan is reviewed and updated before each new phase of construction starts.

Demiton is not CLOCS and accredits no one. This is an independent explainer. Every duty below is read from CLOCS Standard Version 5, November 2024, read 21 October 2026.

The short answer

The principal contractor must develop, implement and maintain a project-specific Construction Logistics Plan that plans and manages vehicle movements into and out of the project (cl 5.2(a)-(b)). The principal contractor's duties are binding only where the client's contract or a planning condition requires CLOCS. It must also review and update the Construction Logistics Plan before each new phase of construction starts (cl 5.2(c)). The window is the start of each phase, not a number of days.

The client has its own side of the same duty: it must make sure the project team develops, implements and monitors a Construction Logistics Plan that meets the Standard's minimum content (cl 4.3(a)). The client's duties are binding where the client has adopted CLOCS.

The three duties, by clause

What the plan has to contain

The Standard does not leave the content to the author. The plan must have input from significant site and fleet operators, commit to planned measures, specify the safest and last mile routes with acceptable reasons for deviation, require a delivery management system and competent site access traffic marshals, and show coordination with neighbouring projects (cl 5.2(b)). On the client's side, the minimum content is input from significant site and fleet operators, community considerations, planned measures, risk-assessed safest and last mile routes, a delivery management system, competent site access traffic marshals, and a plan that stays responsive.

Read those two sentences together. The principal contractor's plan has to commit to measures, name routes and require both a delivery management system and trained marshals, and the client has to see that the project team does it. A plan that reads well but names no routes, or no delivery system, does not meet the content the Standard asks for. The same content links forward to the traffic management plan chapter, which sets out the routing, access and marshal duties the plan relies on.

What the library notes on each duty

Quoted a whole sentence at a time from the library's note on each row.

Keeping the plan alive across phases

The review is tied to the programme, not the calendar. The window is the start of each phase, not a number of days.

What follows is practice, not the Standard's words, offered as a way to show the duty was met. Reopen the plan when the programme moves to a new phase and before that phase starts. Date every revision, record what changed and who approved it, and keep the phase start dates beside the revision dates so that the gap between them is visible. A client monitoring the project can then see the review happened without asking for it.

The same plan in Australia

Australia has its own scheme with its own logistics document. CLOCS-A is a national voluntary Standard (s 1) that binds a contractor only when the client's contract requires it (s 3), or once the contractor is accredited. Its construction logistics management plan has a one month update rule where Version 5 reviews at each phase, so a contractor working in both countries keeps two clocks.

What this page does not hold

It holds the three duties above. The library holds no row for the Standard's clause 3.2, so this page does not state what it says. Read the CLOCS Standard for the full text, and the contract and planning conditions for whether it binds you.

• Traffic management planWhat CLOCS Standard v5 requires of a construction traffic management plan, vehicle routing, site access, traffic marshals and gate checks, by clause.
• Fleet operators and FORSWhat CLOCS Standard v5 requires of a fleet operator, how it points to FORS Silver, and the cited note on London's Direct Vision Standard.

What this page is, and is not

It is the section text this library holds for England, from The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (Great Britain), Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, Part II (Construction Contracts), The Scheme for Construction Contracts (England and Wales) Regulations 1998, as amended for England, and Construction Logistics and Community Safety (CLOCS) Standard, Version 5, with the window and the consequence. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for reading the Regulations, the Act, the Scheme, the CLOCS Standard and the contract you signed.

These pages explain the Standard. They do not mean Demiton checks a job against it, and the duties above are the ones the library holds, not every duty the Standard sets.

Clauses read from the obligation library, release v22, last checked against the source on 21 October 2026.