Whether the authority could run a dispute tomorrow: the ladder and forum the contract sets, the open claims and where each sits on it, the time bars that may have run or are running, the evidence files, the decisions nobody has taken, and what an expert determination or an arbitration would cost. A screen of readiness, not an assessment of who is right.
v1.0 — September 2026
The ladder, the notice mechanics and the time bars follow the precedent's Dispute Resolution Procedure (Clause 58), its claim notices (Clauses 48 and 32) and its service clause (Clause 67), as the product reads them into its notice rules. The registers and evidence statuses are the product's operating vocabulary. Twenty-one checks in eight dimensions, each dimension at its worst check, the read at the worst dimension, never an average. Time bars are counted from the deemed-receipt dates entered, in the contract's unit, on the weekend set, less the holidays you count; the result is "potentially late", never "late", because the count is a screen. Paste the contract text and the tool proposes the ladder.
What the agreement says, step by step. Ladder periods are counted in calendar days here; leave a period blank where the contract states none or you have not read it. The paste-text step proposes the steps present and lists the phrases found; it never sets a number.
The periods within which a claim must be notified, as the contract states them, counted from the claimant's awareness (or the authority's receipt of the payment report) to the other party's deemed receipt of the notice. Used to test each open matter on tab 2.
Paste the agreement, schedules included. The tool looks for the dispute notice and negotiation period, the tiers, expert determination and its effect, the forum, continuing performance, costs, the claim time bars and their consequence, disputed amounts and set-off, the Business Day definition, the service clause and the survival clause, and proposes the steps present with the phrases found. Nothing is set until you accept it; no period is ever set from the text. The text stays in this browser tab.
Every claim, disputed amount or disagreement not yet closed, on either side. A card with a title is counted; remove the cards if there is no open matter. Dates as recorded in the register, not as remembered; "deemed received" is the date under the service clause, not the date the letter was sent.
Where a check covers several matters, answer for the weakest. A core check answered No sets the dimension at Action needed; "Don't know" is treated as a finding.
| Dimension | Status | Basis |
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| Matter | Category | Claimant | Amount | Time bar | Tier and age | File and owner |
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| Check | Status | Basis |
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The read above is a suggestion computed from the entries. A named person records the decision; an override does not change the suggestion, it sits beside it in the export. The block clears whenever the check is re-run.
The Dispute Readiness Check asks one question of a contracting authority's team: if a matter went to the next tier tomorrow, would the file, the notices, the decisions and the budget be in place? It is screening-level. It does not assess the merits of any claim, say whether a notice was valid or late, or replace advice from counsel. It takes the contract's ladder and time bars as the team records them, applies them to the dates in the register, and puts the readiness questions in one place with their sources.
The product this series draws on, PPP Contract Review & Operating Map v1.0.0, reads the precedent's Dispute Resolution Procedure (Clause 58) into a mechanism with these steps: a written Dispute Notice and a negotiation period (58.2, a bracketed period, thirty days in the template); a Technical Dispute Notice given after that period and before any notice of arbitration, with a bracketed period to agree the technical nature (58.3), or an express designation of the matter as a Technical Dispute that bypasses the notice (58.3(b), and the clauses that designate); an Independent Expert for technical disputes, agreed or, after a bracketed window, appointed by an institution on either party's application, determining within a bracketed period, final and binding absent manifest error, deciding its own costs, borne equally until it does (58.3(c) to (k)); institutional arbitration for every other dispute, subject to the earlier steps, three arbitrators, a party's arbitrator to be appointed within a bracketed number of days of the notice of arbitration failing which the institution appoints, a stated seat, hearing place and language, costs paid by the losing party (58.4); recognition, enforcement and interim relief through the courts (58.5); and performance continuing during any referral to an expert or arbitration unless a suspension is agreed (58.6). The precedent's governance committees (Schedule 10) discuss disputes but decide nothing and create no waiver.
The precedent has no mediation, no senior-representatives tier, no adjudicator and no dispute board. The tool asks about them because the UK standard forms carry an interim-binding adjudication tier, FIDIC-derived contracts carry a dispute board with a notice-of-dissatisfaction time bar, and many contracts carry a mediation or executive step; their absence is a fact, not a defect. The notice of dissatisfaction is tracked by hand: enter the decision date as the date the matter entered the next tier.
The product's rules on this machinery, cited in the findings: GD17 (a determination disputed to the party that made it, with nothing beyond), GD20 (a certificate not connected to the dispute procedure), GD21 (parties may fail to agree and nothing follows), GD22 (escalation steps with conflicting periods), XM16 (an event determination not connected to the dispute procedure), XH13 (referral at any time while a determination process runs), DC32 (the dispute clause not carried by the survival clause), XC14 (different forums under different documents of the suite), JC7 (a forum outside the jurisdiction's options), F1 to F5 (notice deadlines, recipients, methods, Business Day rule, time bars without a period), PM7 (payment provisions with no treatment of disputed amounts).
The precedent conditions relief on a two-stage notice: a claim notice within a bracketed number of Business Days of the claimant becoming aware that the event has caused or is likely to cause delay, cost or lost revenue, and full details within a second bracketed period of the other party's receipt of that notice (48.3 for compensation events, claimed by the contractor; 48.7 for relief events, claimed by either affected party). Information provided late forfeits relief for the period of the delay (48.10), a partial bar, which other contracts draft as a total bar. The authority's own time bar is the disputed-amount notice: a bracketed number of Business Days from receipt of the payment report, quantified and with supporting evidence (32.5). The precedent states no consequence for a late disputed-amount notice, and it bars set-off or withholding of a disputed amount until final determination whether or not the notice was in time (32.6, apart from the handback provision): the notice preserves the dispute; it never permits withholding. Change-in-law and variation claims carry no time bar in the precedent beyond referral to the procedure.
"Potentially late" is the product's own timing status and the strongest word the tool uses, because the count is a screen: holidays are deducted only as counted, deemed receipt is as entered, and the awareness date is the claimant's. A potentially late notice by the private party is reported as a point in the authority's favour to be checked, not as a defect. A potentially late notice by the authority (the disputed-amount notice, which is always the authority's; or the authority's own relief-event notice) is a defect in the authority's readiness: the disputed-amount case holds the payment dimension at Action needed; a relief-event case holds notice discipline at Action needed where the contract bars the claim entirely, at Watch where it forfeits the period of delay or states no consequence.
Twenty-one checks in eight dimensions: the ladder and forum; notice discipline (the product's nine notice checks: sender, recipient, delivery method, timing, required content, supporting information, clause reference, prescribed form, follow-up; and the delivery-evidence record the product requires before it validates service); records (a correspondence register with every communication classified, committee minutes, an event register with the statuses potential, notified, under review, confirmed, rejected, disputed, closed); evidence (the product's evidence types and statuses: required, received, verified, missing, disputed; and its confidentiality classes, standard, commercially sensitive, legally privileged); decisions and ownership (the decisions the product reserves to a named person: event qualification, entitlement, formal-notice status, default classification); expert and arbitration readiness; payment discipline; continuing performance and dispute avoidance. Each answer becomes a status as in the other tools of this series: a core No is Action needed, a supporting No is Watch, Partly is Watch, Don't know is Not evidenced and holds the check at Watch. A dimension takes its worst check, and the contract entries and the matters feed it: a forum that differs across the suite documents sets the ladder dimension at Action needed (XC14, high severity in the product); a potentially late authority notice sets the payment or notice-discipline dimension as above; a matter at a formal tier with a thin or empty file sets the evidence dimension at Watch; a matter without a named owner, a limitation date within a year, or a referral made before the negotiation period ran sets decisions and ownership at Watch; matters at formal tiers with no cost estimate, costs above the budget line, an overdue expert or an unappointed arbitrator set expert and arbitration readiness at Watch.
The read is a suggestion that a named person accepts or overrides with a reason; both appear in the export; no override is accepted while no read has been suggested.
The optional step on the first tab is the same pattern engine as the other tools in the series. Here the targets are the dispute notice and negotiation period, the senior-representatives, mediation and adjudication tiers, expert determination and the effect of the determination, the forum and its seat, continuing performance, the costs rule, the claim notice periods and the consequence of lateness, the disputed-amount notice and set-off, the Business Day definition, the service clause and the survival clause. It proposes the steps as present with the phrases and locators found, and bracketed periods as not finalised; the forum is proposed as institutional arbitration only where an administering institution is named, as ad hoc where only rules are named, and not at all where the text excludes arbitration or gives the courts the denser hit; the set-off bar is proposed only where the authority is the party barred. Every proposal needs an explicit Accept; a proposal that would overwrite an entry already made is left for the person to decide; no period is ever set from the text, because the figure in a bracketed template is not the figure in the executed contract.