The purpose of a contract is to give you both the right and the duty to provide the entire scope envisaged in your agreement ie all the agreed goods, works and/or services. But what if you want to split up before then? As my book on Small Works says As all construction projects
Let me introduce you to performance bonds. Despite its name, a performance bond doesn’t guarantee performance – the surety promises to pay up to a specific sum for poor performance, provided the employer gives it enough evidence. If you’d like an analogy, think of them as a type of insurance.
The process of getting a deal done should be simple – but somehow we often far more complex than it needs to be… through time pressures, through inconsistency, or through burying our heads! In a recent English court case (CLS Civil v WJG Evans), the buyer and the supplier tied
The risks on a project, as well as the rewards, need to be shared equitably. Contracts have a significant role to play in what is sometimes referred to as managing with risk ie going ahead with a project while accepting that there will always be a degree of uncertainty… and
There are two ways that law courts (at least in England) have interpreted contracts: literally and purposefully. The literal approach is the more classic or traditional way of interpreting documents. The problem with the literal approach is that it led contract writers into a number of sins: very detailed drafting
The annual ARCADIS Global Disputes Reports consistently link construction disputes with failures to: Administer the contract properly (i.e. run the project) Understand or comply with the contract’s obligations Use the procedures in the contract. If you create a letter of intent that is easy to read, easy to understand and
A contract for the completion of goods, works and services often states an agreed works period or completion date. But is that period/date essential, critical or desirable? An essential term is one without which there is no contract. Under English law, if the parties do not agree a period or
One of the most common misconceptions I come across, when delivering contract awareness training to consultants or contractors, is the belief that an insurance policy limits your liability to your clients. It doesn’t. Insurance is merely an asset against which your clients could bring a claim. The impact of the
Do we set small comfortable objectives in relation to our contracting process and then execute them in a small way? Are you more excited by contract evolution than contract revolution? If you want to stay small, or avoid failure, then don’t start a contract lifecycle management (CLM) process. But if
Although I am a fervent advocate for simpler contracts [see better contracts by design, or steps to simplification], for many businesses a simple document in MS Word is no longer enough. In 2017, I helped The Federation of Master Builders move from complex text documents to adobe forms (an editable