What is a departure schedule (and why it beats marking up the contract)

What is a departure schedule?

A departure schedule is a table setting out every clause in a proposed subcontract that you want changed — what the clause says now, the amendment you're asking for, and why. It goes back to the builder as a single document they can respond to line by line.

The name comes from what it records: the points at which your position departs from the contract as offered. In tendering it's sometimes called a schedule of departures, qualifications, or exceptions, and it often accompanies your price as part of the offer.

Why not just mark up the contract?

A redlined PDF feels like the obvious approach and creates three problems:

• It's hard to respond to. The builder has to work through a whole document to find your changes, and there's no natural place for them to say yes to some and no to others.
• Versions multiply. Two rounds of markup and nobody can say with confidence which file is the agreed one. That ambiguity is a genuine dispute risk if things go wrong later.
• It hides the commercial story. Fifteen tracked changes look like nitpicking. The same fifteen points in a table, each with a one-line reason, look like a professional risk position — and let the builder see instantly which are dealbreakers and which are preferences.

A departure schedule fixes all three. It's also far easier to price against: a builder can see that removing your cap on liquidated damages is worth something to them, and negotiate accordingly.

What goes in one?

Four columns do the job:

| Column | What it holds | |---|---| | Clause | The clause number and heading, so it's unambiguous | | As drafted | What the clause currently says, quoted or fairly summarised | | Departure sought | The specific amendment — actual words where you can | | Reason | One line of commercial rationale |

Some subcontractors add a fifth column for priority (dealbreaker / preferred / noted), which is genuinely useful: it tells the builder where to spend their negotiating effort, and it speeds up agreement.

A worked example

Two lines from a real-world schedule, the way a builder's contracts administrator would want to receive them:

| Clause | As drafted | Departure sought | Reason | Priority | |---|---|---|---|---| | 34.2 Liquidated damages | LDs of $4,500/day, no cap | Insert "LDs capped at 5% of the subcontract sum" | Uncapped LDs cannot be priced | Dealbreaker | | 19.1 Extensions of time | Written notice within 2 business days of the delay arising, as a condition precedent | Amend to 10 business days from when the subcontractor became aware of the delay | 2 days is not administrable from site | Preferred |

Note what each line does: the clause is quoted precisely, the departure is drafted in words the builder can paste straight into the amendment, the reason is one line, and the priority is honest — one dealbreaker, one preference.

If you'd rather start from a blank version of this table, download the free departure schedule template (Excel) — same columns, with a worked example row included.

How to write one that gets agreed

• Know what to ask for. The departures worth writing are the ones that cost you money: uncapped LDs, short EOT notice time bars, hostile retention. Our subcontract review checklist is the list we work from.
• Be specific. "Clause 22.1 to be deleted" or "insert 'capped at 5% of the subcontract sum'" is actionable. "This clause is unfair" is not.
• Give a reason, briefly. One line. "Uncapped LDs cannot be priced" does more work than a paragraph.
• Prioritise honestly. If everything is a dealbreaker, nothing is. Mark the two or three that genuinely determine whether you can take the job.
• Include the void ones anyway. A pay-when-paid clause is void under the Security of Payment Act, but asking for its removal is still worth doing — and the builder's response is informative.
• Send it with your price, not after. A departure schedule attached to your tender is a qualification on the offer. The same document sent after you've been awarded the job is a request for a favour.
• Keep the agreed version. Once the builder marks it up and returns it, the agreed schedule is a contract record of what was negotiated. File it with the executed subcontract.

Where SubSync fits

This is the workflow the AI Commercial Reviewer is built around. Upload the subcontract, get the clauses risk-rated with the typical industry position beside each one, adopt the flags you want to pursue, and the departure schedule assembles from them — clause, current position, amendment, rationale — ready to send to the builder. When the revised contract comes back, upload it and the review tells you which of your departures actually made it in.

Try it free on a real subcontract — you'll see the flags and the departure positions without needing an account.