Claims from subcontractors, and passing them up
The claim arrives from below in the subcontract’s language and has to be presented above in the main contract’s. Something is usually lost in translation.
QScope Team · 21 April 2026 · 4 min read
A subcontractor submits a claim for delay and disruption. The main contractor believes the cause was the employer’s, and wants to pass it up.
That is rarely a matter of forwarding the document.
Three tests, not one
Does it succeed under the subcontract? Was there a relevant event or its equivalent, was notice given, is the loss evidenced.
Does the same cause succeed under the main contract? The lists are similar and not identical, particularly on amended contracts, and a cause that works below may have no equivalent above.
Can the loss be evidenced in main contract terms? The subcontractor’s cost records are the subcontractor’s. Presenting them upstream requires the main contractor to stand behind figures it did not generate.
Where the gaps open
- Notice provisions. Stricter above than below, so a claim validly notified under the subcontract is out of time under the main contract.
- Amended relevant events. Employer-side amendments narrowing the main contract list, with the subcontract left on standard terms.
- Concurrency clauses. Present above and absent below, or the reverse.
- Different assessment periods, so the upstream decision arrives after the downstream one is due.
Passing it up properly
Not by forwarding. The main contractor has to present the claim as its own: its relevant event, its delay to its completion, its loss. The subcontractor’s claim is evidence supporting it, not the claim itself.
That usually means recasting the periods, restating the heads in main contract terms, and adding the main contractor’s own losses, which are not the same as the subcontractor’s.
The timing squeeze
The subcontractor wants an answer. The contract administrator has twelve weeks. The main contractor is contractually obliged downstream on a timetable it does not control upstream.
There is no clean solution. What helps is engaging with the subcontract claim on its merits rather than deferring it entirely to the upstream outcome, because a subcontractor told to wait indefinitely will adjudicate, and it will win on the delay if not on the substance.
The honest position
Some subcontractor claims are good below and unrecoverable above. That is a risk of being in the middle of a chain, and it is priced, or should be. Pretending the two contracts are identical is how it stops being priced and starts being a loss.
QScope keeps delay events and loss and expense heads per project, so a claim received and a claim submitted can be compared line by line.