Chasing the second release
A year after the job closed, with the team dispersed and the file archived, a percentage of the contract sum is still with the employer and nothing in the calendar says so.
QScope Team · 3 February 2026 · 4 min read
The first release happens because practical completion is an event everybody notices. Somebody certifies it, the client knows, the contractor knows, and the retention halves in that valuation.
The second release has none of that. The rectification period ends quietly, twelve months later, on a project that is closed in everyone’s mind.
Why the design of the calendar defeats it
- No document arrives to prompt it.
- The surveyor who set the project up may have left.
- The project file has been archived.
- There is no meeting, no application and no invoice.
- Both sides are busy with live jobs.
Forgetting is the default outcome, not a failure of diligence. Anything that depends on somebody remembering an unprompted date a year out will be forgotten most of the time.
The sequence that has to happen
The release is triggered by the certificate of making good, not merely by the calendar. So the chase is not for money; it is for a certificate, and the certificate depends on a schedule of defects being issued and cleared.
- Rectification period ends.
- Schedule of defects issued, within the period the contract allows.
- Defects made good.
- Certificate of making good issued.
- Balance released in the next payment.
Chasing the money without chasing the schedule achieves nothing, because the certifier cannot issue the certificate until the process has run.
What to do at practical completion
Calculate the rectification end date the day practical completion is certified, and set a reminder two months before it, not on it. Two months is what it takes to arrange an inspection, issue the schedule, get the work done and issue the certificate.
A reminder on the day itself starts a process that then takes another quarter.
The letter that works
Not a demand for money. A note saying the rectification period ends on a stated date, offering to attend an inspection, and asking when the schedule of defects will be issued.
That is a cooperative request to operate a contractual process, and it usually gets a cooperative answer. A demand for release before the schedule exists usually does not.
QScope calculates the release date from the practical completion certificate and warns before it passes, while it is still routine to ask.