Classify a proposed change to a signed PPP contract, set out the procedure it must run through and who usually bears the time and the cost, and see which parts of the contract it reaches: risk allocation, the payment mechanism, financing consents, termination. A screen for the contracting authority's team before a change is agreed, not a determination of anyone's entitlement.
v1.0 — September 2026
Six change and relief mechanisms of a PPP project agreement, read as one workflow: trigger, qualification, notice, mitigation, decision, relief, money, remedy. The screen classifies the change, walks the procedure step by step, and reports impact by confidence (direct, indirect, not indicated, or not assessed where an entry that drives the area is missing) rather than by score. The vocabulary, the workflow and the "what to consider" text are ported from the PPP Contract Review & Operating Map. Paste the contract text and it proposes the parameters for you to confirm.
Financing structure is required before the screen runs: it decides whether the lender step applies and whether a cost reaches the financing consents. Stage and revenue model are recorded in the export as context; they do not change the screen.
Paste the agreement, schedules included. The tool looks for the change protocol, the event regimes, the notice and estimate periods, the base-case adjustment clause and the lender consent terms, and proposes the profile and the contract parameters on the Procedure tab. Nothing is filled in until you accept it; no answer is ever set. The text stays in this browser tab.
Tick everything the change or event affects. These drive the impact screen; they are read as your assessment, not derived.
What the executed contract says for this category. Optional; the contract-text step can propose them. Recorded in the export and shown beside the route.
One question per workflow step, in the order the product's change mechanisms run. Answer for the weakest part; a single lapse in a practice that otherwise works, with evidence, is "Partly". "Not evidenced" and "Don't know" are counted as No. Record the evidence reference beside every Yes; a Yes with none is flagged.
Direct: the change touches the area on the facts you entered. Indirect: the area usually moves with this kind of change. Not indicated: the entries made do not reach it. Not assessed: an entry that could make the area Direct or Indirect is blank or was refused; the row names it. A confidence class, never a score.
| Area | Indication | Why | Re-check after the change |
|---|
| Step | Status | Basis |
|---|
The band 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 screen is re-run.
The Variation and Change Impact Screen helps a contracting authority's team look at one proposed change or one event before it is agreed, classify it under the contract's own regimes, check that the procedure is being followed in the right order, and see which other parts of the contract it reaches. It is screening-level. It does not determine whether a claim is valid, what compensation is due, or whether a change should be approved; those are decisions for named people with the executed contract in front of them.
The screen is a port from PPP Contract Review & Operating Map v1.0.0 (Benchmark Baseline; formerly "PPP Contract Copilot"), a rules-based product built on the Saudi National Center for Privatization & PPP (NCP) Project Agreement Precedent Template. Four of its parts are used:
The product's amendment categories are used for one output: what kind of formal amendment the change would need, if any (payment-mechanism amendment, risk-allocation clarification, procedural amendment, governance amendment), as opposed to a change confirmed under the protocol with no amendment to the agreement's text.
| Area | Direct when | Indirect when |
|---|---|---|
| Risk allocation | You ticked who bears which risk, or the change is permanent and touches the works, the services or the term | The category is a change in law, a compensation event, a relief event or a site or interface event (each reallocates a risk for the event's duration), or you ticked capital expenditure |
| Payment mechanism | You ticked the payment amount or formula, or a cost effect is entered under an authority change, a compensation event, or a change in law of the specific or qualifying type | You ticked KPIs or the services (deductions move with them), or a time effect is entered, or a cost effect is entered under any other category (a private-party change, a general change in law, a relief event, a site or interface event) |
| Financing consents and the base case | You ticked financing or the base case; or capital expenditure is funded by the private party, or its funding is not yet determined; or, under project finance, the cost is at least five per cent of the annual payment | Under project finance only: any cost effect, or a permanent change with the payment amount or formula ticked |
| Termination | You ticked termination provisions or the term | The category is a compensation event, a relief event, a change in law or a site or interface event and a time effect is entered (each can carry a prolonged-event termination limb), or the change is permanent and touches the works |
| KPIs and output specification | You ticked KPIs, performance standards or deductions, or you ticked the services together with the payment amount or formula | You ticked the services or the output specification (without the payment), or the works |
| Insurance and security | You ticked insurance | You ticked the works or capital expenditure, or the category is a relief event (uninsurability sits in that regime) |
| Third parties and subcontracts | You ticked consents and permits or subcontracts | You ticked the works or the services |
Not assessed. Where an entry that could make an area Direct or Indirect is blank or was refused (the cost effect, the time effect, the permanence, the capital expenditure funding, the financing structure, the annual payment, or the change-in-law type), the area reads Not assessed and names that entry, instead of Not indicated. The candidate values it tries are derived from the lines the classes turn on (a cost above zero, a time effect above zero, a cost of five per cent of the annual payment): each line from both sides, plus both ends of the valid range, so every outcome any value could produce is tried; if any of them would lift the area, it does not print the lower class, and the band is held at Proceed with conditions until the entry is made. Capital expenditure ticked with the funding "No capital expenditure" is treated the same way until the two are reconciled. A change-in-law type recorded as unclear prints "Not assessed — type unclear" on an area the type alone would decide, with the class the other entries already give (a cost under any type of change in law reaches the payment at least indirectly). The programme tick, the lifecycle stage and the revenue model are recorded as context and are not scored.
The five-per-cent test for financing consents is the tool's own screening threshold, chosen because financing agreements commonly require lender consent for variations above a stated value and that value is contract-specific and usually cumulative over a year rather than per change. Enter the contract's own threshold in the parameters, add up the year's changes, and treat the tool's line as a prompt to check it. The share is computed exactly from the digits entered. Within 0.1 of the line it is printed to two decimals, rounded down, so the figure printed sits on the side of the line the test used (4.99% is below it; 5.00% is at or above it).
Numbers. The cost effect, the time effect and the annual payment are read strictly: digits, with a dot for decimals. A negative entry, an annual payment of zero, an amount above 10^15, a time effect above 1,200 months, and anything with letters, exponents or a comma, space or apostrophe between digits (which could be a thousands or a decimal separator) are refused, named in the outstanding entries, and the band is withheld until they are corrected. A saving is not screened as a negative cost.
Twelve questions, one per workflow step, answered Yes, Partly, Not evidenced, No or Don't know, with Served late or Submitted late on the two steps below (Not applicable is offered on the lender step where there are no third-party lenders, and on the time-relief step, where it holds only if the time effect is entered as 0; a relief event still requires full details of the relief claimed, so the estimate step always applies). Yes is In order; record the evidence reference beside it. A Yes with no reference is flagged "no evidence reference recorded", and the band's reason says every step is done and evidenced only when every Yes carries one. Partly (a lapse in a practice that otherwise works, with evidence) is Watch. No, Not evidenced and Don't know are all counted as No, printed "Not evidenced (counted as No)" where the answer was not a plain No: Action needed on a core step, Watch on a supporting step. Two core steps carry a time limit whose breach the precedent treats as a failure of the step, and offer an explicit late answer: the notice ("Served late": late notice forfeits relief for the delay, and a strict time bar bars the claim) and the estimate or detailed submission ("Submitted late": on a claim-type event, late information forfeits relief for the delay). The time bar belongs to a late notice of a claim-type event only; under an authority or private-party change there is no claim to bar, and the step's reason says so. Each is counted as No and printed "Served late (counted as No)" or "Submitted late (counted as No)"; a late claim notice therefore gives Stop and regularise, as a No does. The decision step also runs to a period, but that period binds the decision-maker and its lapse runs the silence rule, so it has no late answer. The band is then suggested:
No score, no weighting, no average. "Stop and regularise" means the team should not agree the change or the claim until the missing step is put right, because a step skipped is where entitlement is won or lost, in the product's words. The band is a suggestion that a named person accepts or overrides with a reason; both appear in the export.
The screen names, without counting: an initiator that does not fit the category (an authority-initiated change classified as a relief event, an external event classified as an authority change); a change-in-law category with its type blank or unclear; a general change in law with a cost effect, where most contracts leave that risk with the private party; a change-in-law type entered on another category, which is ignored; a cost entered with nothing ticked that the screen reads; a cost above the annual payment; a trigger answered Yes with no event date; an event date in the future or before 1950; a relief event with a payment effect; and the driving entries not made. The mismatch tests are the overlap tests of the product's CR24 to CR27 rules, applied to entries rather than to text. Several of these also hold the band at Proceed with conditions, as the formula above states: an initiator that does not fit the category, a change in law whose type is blank or unclear, and a site or interface event (reclassify the change under the regime the contract names to leave it). A trigger answered Yes with no event date, and an event date in the future or before 1950, hold it too. The others do not change the band.
The optional step on the Contract tab is the same pattern engine as the Contract Health Check: presence patterns ported from the product's completeness tests and party aliases, a heading index for locators, hits ranked in the operative provisions ahead of the definitions block, values listed as phrases found near the term (up to three, each with a locator, outside square brackets) for the team to check. Here the targets are the change protocol, the notice and estimate periods, the change-in-law definitions and threshold, the compensation and relief event lists, the base-case adjustment clause, the no-better-no-worse basis and the lender consent terms. Proposals fill the profile and the contract-parameter fields only; they never set an answer, and each needs an explicit Accept. Drafting varies, so "not found" is not evidence of absence; no accuracy figure is claimed.