The Tiger by William Blake:
“Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night”
May’s news was dominated by the election, the first full coalition government since the end of the Second World War and the first power-sharing deal between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. We reported on the construction industry’s reaction, the government’s coalition programme, the emergency budget and the new construction minister. Continue reading
I was lucky enough to be asked to help a client recently who was setting up an alliance. I have been involved in a few of these over the years, but it was the first one which I have looked at for a while.
Alliances, like framework agreements and partnering charters, have taken a bit of a back seat in the last year or two. These forms of procurement share something in that they are about forming long term and sustainable relationships within the supply chain. In recent years, the problem has been the fear that this long term approach would be abandoned in favour of the old favourite “lowest price wins”.
So it was good to be asked to help on this new one.
The decision in Banner Holdings Limited v Colchester Borough Council has already caught the attention of Matt Molloy. It is another decision of the TCC on a Part 8 claim dealing with non-compliant adjudication clauses, and it raises (and indeed revisits) a number of interesting issues.
Since the initial coalition agreement was published, three key political developments have taken place. None of these developments have fundamentally altered the position for construction companies and construction lawyers, and all mean that some residual political and practical uncertainty remains. Continue reading
Cases relating to the definition of “construction operations” under section 105 of the Construction Act 1996 often concern adjudication, and not payment. However, whether a contract is a “construction contract” for the purposes of the Construction Act 1996 affects the parties’ payment obligations as well as their right to adjudicate.
A funny thing happened to me recently. I was asked to consider whether a day was in fact a bank holiday and should be excluded from the calculation of when my decision was due. Continue reading
If the parties to a building contract get to the point where one (or even both) of them wants to terminate the contract then, usually, something has gone very wrong.
Each individual construction or engineering contract has its own requirements for termination, so this Ask the team assumes that:
Like most adjudicators, over the years I have had more than one of my decisions scrutinised by the courts. Therefore, I was as interested as the next adjudicator to find out what Coulson J was going to say about the “perfect adjudicator’s decision” when he spoke at the SCL meeting last week. Continue reading
The construction industry has been hit hard by the current recession. Beyond headlines like “Heathrow third runway scrapped”, the construction industry faces further uncertainty as it waits to see what the new coalition government’s public sector spending cuts really mean for key areas, such as housebuilding, and for major projects, such as Crossrail. Continue reading
If you want to see an NEC success story, then take a trip out to Stratford and have a look at the Olympic Stadium. You’ll no doubt be impressed at the results.
On Thursday 29 April 2010, I (and members of the King’s College Construction Law Association) had the privilege of attending a site tour of the Olympic Stadium, led by Gareth Baker and Mike O’Donnell of Team Stadium – and what an impressive tour it proved to be. Continue reading
