A variation is an instructed change to the contracted scope. A claim is a request for additional time or money arising from an event the contract allocates to the other party. Both are normal; both become expensive only when they are handled late.
A verbal instruction on site is the beginning of a dispute. A one-line written instruction, dated and numbered, is the end of one.
Agree the price of a variation before it is executed. Once it is built, the client's leverage has gone and the valuation becomes an argument about rates.
Use the BOQ rates where the work is similar, pro-rata rates where it is comparable, and a fair valuation or dayworks where it is genuinely new. In that order.
A variation can cost money, time, or both. Record the time effect at the moment of instruction — reconstructing it at the end almost never succeeds.
Most contracts require notice of a delay event within a stated period. Late notice is the single most common reason a well-founded extension-of-time claim fails.
Daily site records, labour and plant returns, photographs, and a marked-up programme. A claim is only ever as strong as the records made on the day.
A variation is a change the client instructed. A claim is compensation for an event the client is responsible for but did not instruct — late access, late information, a changed base-build condition.
From the contract rates where the work is similar, pro-rata where it is comparable, and by fair valuation or dayworks where it is genuinely new. Dayworks rates should be agreed at tender, not negotiated afterwards.
A contractual adjustment to the completion date because of a delay the client bears. It protects the contractor from liquidated damages; it does not automatically entitle them to extra money, which is a separate loss-and-expense question.
Late notice and thin records. Most contracts require notice within days of the event, supported by contemporaneous evidence. A claim assembled at the end of the job from memory rarely survives scrutiny.
Fix the scope split with the landlord before tender, minimise provisional sums, agree dayworks rates at tender, instruct every change in writing, and value variations before they are built.
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