Monthly Archives: October 2018

REUTERS | Kim Hong

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

REUTERS | Maxim Shemetov

Earlier this year, I was reminded by those lovely people at Practical Law Construction that I’ve been blogging for them for ten years, ever since they launched in October 2008. They told me this is my 320th post, which works out at an average of 2.66 posts a month. If only I had a £1 for every word… Assuming an average of 1,000 words a post, I might not be able to retire just yet, but it sure would go some way to financing a few nice holidays!

My first post was published on 24 October 2008 and was called “How to stay on the right side of the adjudicator“. I started off by reminding everyone that adjudicators are only human (it took Rag ‘n’ Bone man another eight years to sing about this) and that post contained a lot of “don’ts” (eleven, I counted). My last post (before today), looked at the multiple contracts point (when substance and jurisdiction overlap), raised before HHJ Stephen Davies in Rawlings Consulting (UK) Ltd v Maelor Foods Ltd. It is a principle that has been around almost as long as I’ve been blogging!

Jonathan’s 10th anniversary is almost upon us too, as his first piece went live just a few weeks after mine, on 12 November 2008. He looked at the Construction Contracts Bill 2008, which soon fell by the wayside and got replaced by what eventually became known as the ever-so-easy-to-remember LDEDC Act 2011!

And in between? Well, I think we’ve covered the A-Z of adjudication and much more besides.  Continue reading

REUTERS | Siphiwe Sibeko

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

REUTERS |

I’ve not long returned from the Windy City where I attended the 8th International Society of Construction Law Conference.  I chaired a session titled “Bringing Order To The Delay Melee: Understanding the SCL Delay & Disruption Protocol and AACE RP 29R-03”.

Most of you will be aware of the SCL Protocol, which is now in its second edition, but I would hazard a guess that many of you haven’t come across the catchily titled AACE RP 29R-03 before. It is the Advancement of Cost Engineering’s (AACE) International Recommended Practice No. 29R-03 on Forensic Schedule Analysis.

While AACE RP 29R-03 is very different to the Protocol and focuses on the recommended steps for forensic programme delay analysis, the speakers did an excellent job of summarising how the two documents deal with some of the common issues relating to delay, one of which is concurrency. That got me thinking about the Court of Appeal’s recent judgment in North Midland Building Ltd v Cyden Homes Ltd, and the implications it will have on claims for extension of time.  Will it really have the impact that some commentators are suggesting? Continue reading

REUTERS | Heinz-Peter Bader

The Court of Appeal has come to the aid of Arcadis Consulting (UK) Ltd by overturning Coulson J’s judgment in ​Arcadis Consulting (UK) Ltd v AMEC (BSC) Ltd – a case described by the judge as one “with something of a sting in its tail”. The sting in question was Coulson J’s finding that a contract between Arcadis and AMEC did not incorporate any term that limited Arcadis’ liability. As a result, Arcadis faced a potential loss of £40 million. Continue reading

REUTERS | Andrew Winning

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

REUTERS | Kai Pfaffenbach

The last time I looked at the dispute between Rawlings Consulting (UK) Ltd and Maelor Foods Ltd, I was talking about HHJ Eyre’s judgment and how the arbitration clause in a JCT standard building contract can “trump” a Part 8 application for declaratory relief.

This time, I’m looking at HHJ Stephen Davies’ judgment and Maelor’s (the employer) jurisdictional challenge, based on the argument that the dispute which Rawlings (the contractor) referred to adjudication arose under more than one contract.  Continue reading

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