Freddie Mercury from Queen:
“And we have no such thing as a budget anymore. Our manager freaks when we show him the bill. We’re lavish to the bone.”
This month saw the government deliver its emergency budget. If only the country’s economics were as straightforward as being a rock star once was. Continue reading
In Bouygues v Dahl-Jensen, the Court of Appeal said:
“Adjudicators will make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes will be glaringly obvious and disastrous in their consequences for the losing party.”
Even though the possibility of making mistakes was recognised by the Court of Appeal (and both parties, as they agreed that the adjudicator had made a mistake), the court went on to hold that if an adjudicator makes a mistake, the decision will still be enforced unless the adjudicator answered the wrong question. Continue reading
In September last year, under the heading unreasonable skill and care, I looked at the dilemma facing professional people who need to strike a balance between giving advice in the timescale required and taking long enough to be as confident as they can be that the advice is correct.
Sustainability is here to stay, but have the industry’s standard form contracts caught up? Should they be leading the charge? Are they just hanging on the coat tails of government regulation?
When I first read the Court of Appeal’s decision in Kookmin Bank v Rainy Sky SA, I couldn’t believe it. Surely I had misunderstood the facts? So I read it again, and everything was as I had thought. Was I missing something?
A recent Court of Appeal decision set many construction practitioners thinking about how the parties communicate and give notices to each other. In particular, when a statute or contract requires a company to give a notice or sign a document, do the execution rules of the Companies Acts always apply? Continue reading
Will there ever come a time when parties can stop arguing over whether all of their contract terms are in writing?
Some may argue that this time will come (maybe next year) when the amendments to the Construction Act 1996 come into force. That’s because part of the proposed amendments do away with the section 107 requirements (agreements in writing). Continue reading
If a high net worth individual wants to carry out work to their house, or even intends to build a new house, what form of building contract might you recommend for their works? Continue reading
This may be a children’s playground taunt, most commonly associated with accusations of dishonesty (it is actually paraphrased from William Blake’s poem, “The Liar”) but, in recent months, the courts have dealt with a number of cases where one party has alleged the other is guilty of fraud (or something akin to fraud). Continue reading
We all know that we need to improve energy use in new houses and buildings, so why should we care about existing housing stock? On 10 June, the Construction Products Association (CPA) published An Introduction to Low Carbon Domestic Refurbishment, a guide that answers that question and might even provide some inspiration for the wider construction industry.
