Practical Law

In North Midland Building Ltd v Cyden Homes, the Court of Appeal held that parties to a construction contract are free to apportion risk in the event of concurrent delay. For more detail on that case, see my colleague, Alexandra Clough’s blog post, Concurrent affairs: North Midland Building Ltd v Cyden Homes.

Cyden (as employer) entered into a construction contract with North Midland (as contractor) based on the JCT Design and Build 2005 standard form contract. An amendment to clause 2.25.1.3 stated:

“(b) any delay caused by a Relevant Event which is concurrent with another delay for which the Contractor is responsible shall not be taken into account”.

One of the Relevant Events was “acts of prevention“ by the employer. In other words, clause 2.25.1.3 provided that, if the employer prevented progress of the works and caused delay, but the contractor was also responsible for a concurrent delay, the contractor would not be entitled to an extension of time. The Court of Appeal, upholding the first instance decision, held that such a clause is enforceable and does not offend any principle of English law, including the prevention principle. Continue reading →

In the beginning…

Happy birthday, Practical Law Construction! A lot has changed in the ten years since the “blog page” came into being.

In October 2008 we were living in St Albans, our son was still at school and Labour were in power. Lehman Brothers had recently collapsed and the global financial crisis was in full swing. Liverpool were top of the Premier League, with Aston Villa and Hull City in the top five. Tottenham Hotspur were bottom and, having sacked Juande Ramos, had just hired Harry Redknapp to revive their fortunes. Lewis Hamilton was on the verge of being crowned F1 world champion (well, not everything changes).

Meanwhile the Government was consulting on proposed changes to the Construction Act, responding to concerns (expressed loudly by Rudi Klein and others) that the legislation didn’t offer sufficient protection to the “little guy” and needed beefing up in order to achieve its objectives. (Some of us look back wistfully to a time without pay less notices, when Tolent clauses roamed the earth devouring any small sub-contractor who dared to challenge them.)

It was against that background that I was asked to post my first blog on the new Practical Law Construction web page. The subject-matter, “Packaging construction and engineering documents“, is just as relevant today. Little did I know that, ten years on, both Practical Law and I would still be going strong.  Continue reading →

Employers under construction contracts often find themselves under time pressure to get started with construction of their projects prior to concluding negotiations with their preferred contractor and before the building contract is entered into. In such a scenario, employers commonly choose to rely on a letter of intent. This should give the contractor comfort to proceed with certain elements of the construction works, while the parties continue to negotiate the full contract terms.

Unfortunately not all “letters of intent” are clearly formulated in advance, and the parties may find themselves proceeding with the works on the basis of a series of exchanges and correspondence, as was the case in Arcadis Consulting (UK) Ltd v AMEC (BSC) Ltd. Continue reading →

Some of the world’s most iconic buildings were conceived as a result of architectural competitions. You may be surprised how often such competitions result in controversy.

Jorn Utzon submitted his winning concept for the new opera house in Sydney in the mid-1950s. He walked away from the project 11 years later (7 years before its grand opening), famously calling it the “Malice in Blunderland” project. Political changes, differences of opinion over procurement, and the realities of turning a groundbreaking concept into something buildable all took their toll. Continue reading →