Proof of conceptEvery case, officer and figure in this build is invented. Nothing it produces is an act of the Value for Money Office.
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Section 5 of 8

How a project’s progress is recorded

Once a contract is awarded, the question changes from "is this price reasonable" to "is anything happening". The platform answers it from two measures, which move independently and are recorded separately.

The two measures of movement
MeasureWhere it comes fromWhat it means
Financial movementGIFMIS, or a payment schedule entered by an officerMoney was committed, paid, advanced or retained against the project
Physical progressRecorded against a project by an officer, saying how it was establishedWork seen on the ground, as a percentage of the contracted scope

They are kept apart on purpose. A project that is being paid but shows no physical progress, and a project that is progressing but has had no payment for eight months, are different problems with different causes, and a single blended figure would hide both.

How progress reaches the project record Payments arrive from GIFMIS or by hand, and physical progress from a site report or return; both update the project record, which the dormancy job evaluates. Payment recordedFrom GIFMIS, acontrolled file, or anofficerFinancial movement Progress recordedSite visit,photographs,consultant’s report orentity returnPhysical progress Project recordupdatedEach measure datedseparately, with itsoriginNever blended into onefigure Dormancy evaluatedRuns on a schedule,with no human actionneededDaily job DormantNeither measure hasmoved for theconfigured periodFlagged, with theevidence that triggeredit On the dormancyregisterVisible to the Office,with what last movedand whenNothing is deleted
How progress reaches the project record

Dormancy happens without anybody deciding it

This is deliberate and it is the point. A stalled project is only ever found by somebody noticing, and nobody is assigned to notice. So the platform evaluates every project on a schedule: if neither measure has moved for the period the Office has configured, the project becomes dormant on its own, and the record says which measure last moved and when. The threshold is configuration with an effective date, not a number in the code — changing it is something an administrator does.

How much a reading rests on

Every observation says how it was established — a site visit, dated photographs, a supervising consultant's report, the entity's own return, or an estimate made at a desk — and the screen marks each as observed, reported or estimated. All are usable. They are not the same evidence, and a reviewer weighing a project's position should not have to ask which kind they are looking at.

Three things a reading cannot do, because each of them would let a project's history be quietly rewritten: it cannot be dated in the future; it cannot be older than the reading already on the record; and it cannot drop without an explanation. Progress does go backwards — a collapse, a demolition, an earlier figure that was wrong — but it is never routine, so it has to be said out loud rather than typed in passing.