Many if not most construction contracts contain notice provisions, which are fine: contractor have to give reasonable notice of their claims. Others contain Queen of Hearts clauses: clauses which are designed to be practically impossible of compliance and hence to frustrate the underlying contractual scheme of payment for varied work, extension of time in defined circumstances, etc.
Recently, I have seen examples where
- The contractor is required to give no less than 10 notices/claims in respect of the same event, each expressed to be a condition precedent to payment;
- The contractor is required to provide a full time impact analysis every time something happens which might – just might – cause a delay;
- If the employer issues a variation order, varying the work, the contract has to promptly give notice in a prescribed form that the variation order varies the work. Again, this completely pointless notice is a condition precedent to payment for the varied work.
I have not yet seen a provision requiring claims to be submitted on unicorn vellum and served on Father Christmas, but the effect is much Continue reading
I am not big into petitions. But the recent By-Law designed to stop dogs running freely on local beaches really does get my goat.
The great majority of what I have been doing has been in relation to adjudications, and I was very pleased to see that the Federal Government has launched a review into the absurd disparities between the Acts in different States and Territories, to be run by John Murray. I was honoured to be able to lead the Society of Construction Law Australia’s report into all of this in 2014: we came down firmly in favour of a federal system. I have acted or advised in adjudications in all jurisdictions in Australia apart from Tasmania and the ACT, and have encountered no good reason at all for the present patchwork of quite different regimes in different States and Territories. The challenges and the best answers are the same everywhere.