Guide · Construction
A progress statement is certified on documents: summary, measurement sheets, site reports, material dossiers. What is missing and how to get settled in days.
In short
Updated September 2026 · 11 min
You have two progress statements sent three weeks ago, one returned with remarks and one nobody answers, and the money is in installed pipe. At the installation contractors we work with, the documents behind the statement come out of the execution workflow: the measurement sheet, the site report and the approval dossier of each item exist by the time the statement is composed. This guide covers what a progress statement (situație de lucrări) is in the contract's terms, how long settlement takes on paper and in reality, which documents certify it, where it usually breaks and how the pieces are gathered so the statement becomes an export.
The contractor sends the monthly statement together with the supporting documents, and the supervisor does not certify for payment any amount whose documents are not complete and in final form. That is how the general conditions of public works contracts put it: "monthly, the Contractor shall send the Supervisor, in four copies, the Statement of Works presenting in detail the amounts the Contractor considers itself entitled to, together with the supporting documents" (HG 1/2018, clause 50.1). A statement not signed by the contractor's representative is "null and void".
The sentence that holds the money in place is in the same clause: "the Supervisor shall not certify for payment amounts for which the Contractor has not provided in full and in final form the necessary supporting documents, reasonably established by the Supervisor" (HG 1/2018, clauses 50.1 and 50.3). The statement is not a table of quantities and prices; it is a request for money, and the request is certified on documents. Quantities are established by the supervisor "by measurement", with the contractor present; if you do not show up, the supervisor's measurement "shall be accepted by the Contractor as correct" (clause 49.1).
The forms come from elsewhere. HG 907/2016 says that forms F1–F5 of the bid estimate "shall be used to draw up the statements of executed works, for settlement" (Annex 10, chapter V). Hence the rule every estimator knows: the statement follows the same structure as the bid, item by item, at the bid prices. No law defines the progress statement itself, though; it exists through the contract. With a private client the circuit is the one you wrote into the contract, or the one you did not.
The law and the standard contract give 30 days for verification and 30 for payment, while in reality four in ten construction invoices are overdue. On paper the circuit is tight. The supervisor "shall, within 30 days of receiving the Statement of Works, issue a Payment Certificate", a deadline that "may not be extended without the Contractor's consent", and the client pays "within 30 days of receiving the Payment Certificate" (HG 1/2018, clauses 50.3 and 50.4). The invoice is issued from the 15th day after the certificate, and from 1 January 2026 it goes into e-Factura within 5 working days of issue (OUG 89/2025).
Law 72/2013 lays the same frame over any contract. Between businesses, the acceptance or verification procedure "may not exceed 30 calendar days", and the payment term "may not exceed 60 calendar days", except for longer clauses that are not abusive (art. 3 para. 4 and art. 5 para. 1). Contracting authorities pay within 30 days of the invoice or of verification (art. 6).
Reality is different, and not because of the deadlines. Atradius measures in Romanian construction 41 % of invoices overdue, an average payment term of 50 days and 5 % bad debts (Atradius, 2025). In the Construction Barometer 2026, 41.7 % of firms name late collections as their most frequent difficulty (IPEP, 2026). And on PNRR, on 1 September 2026, certified works had reached 64 % of the contracted value and collections 33 %, with sites "at a physical stage of 50–60 %" settled "at only about 5 %, because of the lack of the documents needed to certify them" (FPSC, 2026). The 30-day clock starts when the file is complete; until then, nothing runs.
Atradius, Romania 2025 (construction); IPEP, Construction Barometer 2026, 108 firms; FPSC, 1 September 2026 (PNRR)
The ministry's PNRR settlement instructions require statements signed by three parties, measurement sheets with the quantity calculations, site reports, the NR/NCS register and the summary with the bid estimates, and each document answers a different check. The list is the most concrete official description of the file behind a statement, and it is worth reading even without PNRR works: an attentive private client asks for the same things, only without writing them down anywhere.
For works contracts, the transfer request is accompanied, among others, by "the statements of works for the executed works corresponding to each invoice, signed by the client, the contractor and the site supervisor", "the critical-phase acceptance reports", "the partial acceptance reports attesting the physical stage of execution", "the financial summary of the statements of works with the bid estimates per object", "the findings notes issued by the site supervisor/contractor and the site instructions issued by the designer" and "the NR/NCS register" (MDLPA, 2022). Then the client checks three things: unit prices in the statement are "lower than or equal to the unit prices in the winning bid", quantities "are consistent with those in the corresponding measurement sheets, detailed with the quantity calculation", and the value fits within the approved project.
Read that way, the list is no longer bureaucracy. Each document proves one thing, and the statement passes when all four questions have an answer on paper: at what price, in what quantity, with what quality and with what differences from the bid.
What each document proves
Unit prices are the bid prices, item by item.
Quantities in the statement are the measured ones, not the bid ones.
The work was checked at its moment, by all parties, and is conforming.
The installed product is the one approved by supervisor, designer and client.
Differences from the bid were approved before execution.
All three parties checked the same figures.
Statements come back for quantities without calculations, additional works without an approved note, reports signed by two parties out of three, materials without an approved dossier and subcontractor statements that do not match yours. None of them means the work is bad; all of them mean the document was produced afterwards, not at its moment.
The five share one cause. The document exists in the world but not in the file, because it was produced in a different place and at a different moment from the statement. The person hunting for a declaration of performance two weeks before handover is the same person hunting for the third signature on a report two days before the statement.
Statement returned
Statement certified
Every item in the statement has its own chain of documents, bid price, approved material dossier, measured quantity, site report, and the statement is composed from certifiable items, not written at the end of the month. The structure is already given by HG 907/2016: the same forms, the same items from bid to settlement. What is usually missing is the link between the item and its documents, because the bid is in a spreadsheet, the material dossier in an e-mail thread, the measurement in a notebook and the report in a binder.
The rule is a single one: whoever signs a document also files it, linked to the bid item, at the moment of signing. The measurement is taken per item and goes into the sheet with its calculation then, not at month end. The hidden-works report is generated from the execution stage and signed at its moment, by all parties. The approved material dossier stays linked to the item, in its approved version, not the last one sent. The additional works order is a status on the item before execution, not a piece of paper afterwards.
At month end the statement is not written, it is exported: items that have all their documents go in, items that do not show what they are missing, and what is missing is requested while the crew is still on site. This is what an item looks like when it is ready to certify:
At an installation contractor with over 100 employees and several sites in parallel, the documents behind the statement come out of the execution workflow, and the statement is composed from them. The workflow starts from quoting from the bill of quantities: the quoted items are the same ones that enter the material approval dossier, and the approved version of the dossier stays linked to the item, with the declaration of performance of the installed product.
Site reports are generated from the execution stages and signed at their moment, with the signature visible on the item. When a material is replaced, the replacement goes through the same approval circuit before installation, and the additional works order is a status on the item, not a paper hunted at settlement. At month end the documentation lead sees the items with a complete chain and the ones with something missing, and requests what is missing that week.
The same documents, gathered this way, are also the pieces of the as-built file that the new Code requires in electronic form. That is no coincidence: the progress statement and the as-built file are two exports from the same file.
The document chain per item makes sense when settlement is on measured quantities, with several parties signing; in three situations it changes nothing.
Before sending the next statement, run its items through the list below and take out the ones that fail, instead of sending everything and waiting for remarks; a smaller certified statement beats a large returned one. The pieces most often missing come from material approval: the material dossier guide shows the circuit the approved version comes out of.
Before you send the statement
It depends on the contract, not on a general law. In public contracts under HG 1/2018 the statement is signed by the contractor's representative, otherwise it is void, and the client's supervisor certifies it. For PNRR settlement, the ministry's instructions require statements signed by the client, the contractor and the site supervisor. With private clients the circuit is whatever the contract says; if it says nothing, you write it, before the first statement.
No. Neither Order 1496/2011 nor the new Code (art. 456) lists progress statements among the site supervisor's duties; the supervisor signs the critical-phase and hidden-works reports. Endorsing the statement comes from the contract and from the funder's instructions. In practice the supervisor checks the documents they sign anyway; the statement passes if those documents exist.
In public contracts under HG 1/2018, no: the invoice is issued from the 15th day after the payment certificate, for the certified amount, and "in the absence of a corresponding invoice, a payment shall not be considered due". From 1 January 2026 the invoice goes into e-Factura within 5 working days of issue. With private clients the order is set by the contract, but the logic is the same: acceptance first, then the invoice.
Get them approved before you execute them. Additional works orders and omission notes go into an NR/NCS register that a public client requests at settlement, and amounts without an approved note are not certified. The most expensive returned statement is the one with works done "at the supervisor's request", by phone, without a note: the work is done, the money does not come.
The first conversation is about your process: who does what, on which documents, where time is lost.
One email a month, only when we publish. Nothing else.
From 25 August 2026 the Romanian as-built file must be electronic and uploaded to the National Construction Register. What it means for a contractor's records.
Read →The four chapters (A–D) of the Romanian as-built file, who is responsible for each, what is usually missing at handover and how to build it as you go.
Read →Material approval (MAF / submittals): what the packet contains, the technical office → supervisor → designer → client circuit and where time is lost.
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