The overrun that never happens.

Five things eat the margin on a civil job, and they are the same five every time: rework, the baseline overrun, forfeited entitlements, disputes and non-compliance. Each one starts as a single fact - a failed test, a cost code a few thousand over, a direction given on site, a missing diary day, a certificate a month from expiry. The project manager who owns the job usually has that fact somewhere, in a system nobody reads against the contract until month end. By then the drift has compounded from $50K to $5M, the claim window has shut, and the panel has noticed the lapsed ticket. Demiton reads the register that holds the fact while it is still a fact and not yet a cost.

Every connector, register and surface on this site does one of these five jobs. They are listed in the order published research says each costs a contractor, most first. Why the diseases are in this order sets out the argument, and research.demiton.io keeps every figure with its source.

The five diseases

ReworkWork done twice: failed inspections, NCRs, wrong ground assumptions.

Baseline overrunCost and programme drift against the tender.

Forfeited entitlementsVariations and time owed but never claimed: notices missed, time bars closed, wet days never logged.

DisputesThe claim that became a case.

Non-complianceThe right to bid itself: panels, prequalification, certificates.

Running today

All five protections run every day, each against the registers that hold its facts. Where a register is still empty, the protection says which kind of system would fill it.

Weather is not a sixth disease. A wet day the contract entitled you to claim, and nobody claimed, is a forfeited entitlement, and Demiton treats it as one.

Why a register and not a dashboard

A dashboard shows the number after someone builds the report. A register is the fact itself, structured and queryable the moment it lands: a test result, a variation, a day’s weather, a certificate’s expiry date. That matters because every one of the five is a timing problem. The notice had to be served by a date. The drift was cheap to fix at $50K and ruinous at $5M. The panel checks your certificate on its own schedule, not yours.

Demiton fills the registers every night from the systems you already run - see What the platform does - and runs a check for each disease against them. Where a register is still empty, the check says which kind of system would fill it. The fact behind any alert is one question away in Claude or ChatGPT.

Three words, each for one thing

Three words, each for one thing

Word	What it means	Example
Obligation	One duty a contract or law sets	Claim an extension of time within 28 days of the delay starting (AS 4000 cl 34.3)
Protection	What guards that obligation: a watch, a check, a countdown or a threshold	The 28 days counted from the diary entry that recorded the delay
Disease	The one of five the protection prevents	Forfeited entitlements

Obligations lists every duty Demiton reads and which disease each one guards against.

Next steps

• Rework, Baseline overrun, Forfeited entitlements, Disputes, Non-compliance - one page each: what it is, where it starts, and the registers it reads
• Why the diseases are in this order - the argument for the order
• Register catalog - every register, grouped by domain and by disease
• Quickstart - ask a real question in a few minutes