Category 03
Procurement and contracts
Routes, tender lists, JCT and NEC, bid analysis and where liability actually lands.
Who can issue an instruction
A conversation on site is not an instruction. It becomes one when somebody with authority confirms it in writing, and it becomes a claim when nobody does.
Reading contractor’s proposals against your requirements
Two documents describe the building. One is what you asked for, the other is what you are being offered. Nobody is obliged to point out where they differ.
Novation, and what the client gives up
Your architect wrote the specification. After novation the same architect works for the contractor building it. That is normal, and it is worth...
What an employer’s agent is actually for
On design and build there is no architect administering the contract. Somebody has to hold the employer’s side of it, and the contract assumes...
Employer’s requirements that can be enforced
A requirement that states an outcome and a test is enforceable. A requirement that states an aspiration is an invitation to price the cheapest thing...
Collateral warranties and who actually needs them
A building contract binds two parties. Everybody else with an interest in the building, including funders, buyers and tenants, has no contractual route...
Choosing a contractor on more than the price
Every developer knows the cheapest tender is not always the cheapest job. Far fewer have a method for working out which one it is.
Payment terms and what they do to cash flow
Payment terms look administrative until a facility drawdown cycle and a payment cycle fall out of step, at which point they are everything.
Reading contract amendments as a commercial risk
Nobody signs a standard form any more. The deal is in the amendments, and they arrive as an appendix nobody prices.
Retention, bonds and parent company guarantees
Three different instruments protect against three different things. Clients frequently hold one and believe they are covered for all of them.
Qualifications and exclusions, pricing the gaps
A qualification is a bidder telling you what they have not priced. It is the most useful page in the return and the least read.
Liquidated damages, setting a defensible rate
A liquidated damages rate that nobody can explain is a rate that will not be enforced, and the client is left proving actual loss instead.
JCT versus NEC for a residential developer
Both forms work. They fail in different ways, and they fail when a client picks the one their team is not resourced to run.
JCT Design and Build, where the risk really sits
Design and build is chosen for certainty. Whether it delivers any depends almost entirely on a document most clients never read closely.
Normalising bids before you compare them
Four bids for the same scheme are almost never bids for the same scope. Until the differences are stripped out, the totals are not comparable.
Single stage or two stage, choosing honestly
The decision is usually taken by whoever speaks first in the meeting. It deserves better, because it sets how much leverage you will have for the rest...