GMH Planning Ltd

NEC3 and NEC4 contract training and consultancy from Redhill

GMH Planning Ltd works with clients, contractors, subcontractors, consultants and suppliers across the construction and engineering industry on the New Engineering Contract (NEC) family of contracts. The company states that it has been helping the industry build knowledge and understanding of the NEC forms of contract since 2006. Its activity combines training, scheduled public workshops, advisory support and a body of free reference material on NEC3 and NEC4.

Training courses and public workshops

The training side is aimed at helping attendees understand the principles of the New Engineering Contracts, the risk profile involved when pricing, and how to administer contractual clauses effectively. Two delivery formats are described: training courses and scheduled public online workshops and events for people working with the NEC.

The workshop calendar listed at the time of writing included the following online sessions:

• NEC4 ECC Overview – a one-day online course introducing the contracts within the NEC4 suite and the specific changes made to the NEC4 Engineering and Construction Contract (ECC).
• NEC4 Programme Workshop – covers the key aspects of producing and managing a programme during the life of a project.
• NEC4 Compensation Event Workshop – introduces the NEC compensation event process, the mechanism within the NEC4 contracts for dealing with change.

Advice, contract reviews and audits

Beyond training, GMH Planning offers advice, contract reviews, audits and resources intended to support the effective administration of projects under NEC contracts. This advisory line sits alongside the training programme and the free materials.

Free guidance notes, FAQs and publications

A substantial part of the site is devoted to openly available reference material intended to raise awareness and practical knowledge of the NEC suite. It includes NEC guidance notes, NEC3 and NEC4 FAQs, downloadable documents and a blog.

Among the guidance notes listed are an introduction to the company's NEC guidance notes, an overview of the NEC4 suite of contracts, and clause-level commentary such as ECC Section 63 on assessing compensation events and ECC Section 61 on notifying compensation events. The downloads section carries a series of monthly CECA/GMH NEC4 bulletins, with a master list of those issued to date; recent examples cover the different types of quotation in relation to compensation events, the NEC4 Term Service Contract (TSC), and finishing or closing down a project under an NEC contract.

Conferences, publishing and the NEC People forum

GMH Planning states that it regularly presents on aspects of the NEC contract at national conferences and has published a large number of NEC-related articles for CECA, the ICE Procurement, Management and Law publication and the NEC user-group newsletter, among others.

The company also describes itself as responsible for the largest NEC4 discussion forum in the industry, the LinkedIn group NEC People – Managing NEC3/NEC4 Contracts, which it reports has over 11,500 active members. That group has led to annual NEC People Conferences, which the company says attract hundreds of delegates representing senior members of the industry to discuss, learn and debate the latest issues around the contracts and to establish changes required in future versions.

Company details

GMH Planning Ltd is registered as GB 05964538 and gives its address as Unit 8, Phoenix House, Redhill Aerodrome, Kings Mill Lane, Redhill, RH1 5JY, United Kingdom.