Showstoppers are A clause or term that could bring negotiations or your contract to a juddering halt Over the past 9 months, my newsletters have proposed a series of tips, tools and techniques to spot and solve showstoppers. What should you do? Do you work with or for your clients?
Most consultant appointments allow a licence for your client to use your drawings and designs for the Project for which you created them; and if your client uses them for other purposes then you are not liable for such use. How ‘the Project’ is defined will affect how your client
In a series of articles for journals and LinkedIn, I have outlined my view of contracting as a process, rather than treating contracts as stand-alone documents and their creation as drive-by events. A contract process maturity model This is a tool designed to refine this idea and future-proof your contracting
Copies of my book How to Write Simple and Effective Consultant Appointments in Just 500 Words have been prompting contacts, clients and friends to actually sit down and review their existing contracts. Bill Evans from D2E said “I must say, it was easy and compelling reading. The contents provides so
What is a watertight contract? In my view it is like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow – we’d all like it to exist, but it doesn’t. Recent examples like Pimlico plumbers, Uber and Oakhurst diary have shown how so-called watertight contracts have been leaking at
A US$60m project for a luxury Caribbean resort came to a sorry end for many hundreds of disgruntled customers. Even if your project does not involve cabanas, windswept beaches or multi-million pound deals, you can learn from the lessons of Harlequin and its contractor. Setting the scene The ‘startling features’
Alan Sugar once said: I have always been an honest trader. I come from a school of traders where there was honour in the deal. No contracts, just a handshake and that’s it, done. That’s the way I prefer to do business… Can You Contract with a Handshake? looked at
A contract, whether it is a multi-million pound construction project, a structural survey on a house you were buying, or the design of your porch, is there to solve a client’s problem. Client’s don’t buy drills, they buy a tool to help them create holes. Client’s don’t buy porches, they
Do you believe that if you insure your liabilities, the level of your insurance cover acts as a limit on your liability? It doesn’t. This is the most common misconception among business owners when I am delivering workshops on contracts. My objective is to help both sides protect their interests
Although you cannot avoid mandatory legislative requirements, such as the right to suspend or claim interest for late payments, some unscrupulous payers include unenforceable conditions, perhaps hoping the other does not know the law?! Another vexatious approach is to make compliance with a legal right almost impossibly tricky, creating hurdles