Construction Contracts Questions and Answers Third Edition By David Chappell
Many people have told me that the previous editions of this book have been very helpful. Obviously, that is good to hear. In the new edition, I have increased the overall number of questions to 225, achieved by the deletion of the 25 questions which seemed least useful and the addition of 50 new questions. A few old legal cases have been removed and over 45 new ones added. The answers to all the existing questions have been updated as necessary. The Royal Institute of British Architects’ Information Line was set up on 1 May 1995. The idea was that RIBA members could ring in with a problem and be directed to a specialist adviser who would give ten or fifteen minutes of complimentary, liability-free comments to point the architect in (hopefully) the right direction. I have been a specialist adviser to the RIBA since the inception of the service and more recently to the Royal Society of Ulster Architects, answering thousands of questions posed by architects. In my (now long) career as an architect and a consultant, I have also dealt with a multitude of problems from contractors, sub-contractors and building owners.
This book includes some of the more common questions, together with a few unusual ones and several that address misconceptions. I must emphasise that these are real questions. They are not questions that I have invented by looking at what the courts have decided and then matching a question to the decision. In each case, I have had to see whether there is anything in the decisions of the courts, in legislation or in the contracts themselves which provides an answer. Where there is no ready answer, I have said so, and I have offered a view. I have tried to keep each answer reasonably short while endeavouring to make the answer to each question self-contained. This has resulted in occasional instances where answers overlap slightly when dealing with similar subject matter. For the sake of simplicity, it has been assumed that the contract administrator is an architect. However, very often the role of contract administrator is taken by members of other disciplines, and in such instances the reference to an architect should be taken to be a reference to a member of the particular discipline.
Construction Contracts Questions and Answers Third Edition PDF Free Download
Some of the questions were concerned with earlier forms of contract, but they have all been updated as necessary to refer to the latest 2011 series of JCT contracts, i.e. SBC, IC, ICD, MW, MWD and DB. Questions have been included on related topics such as architects’ fees, design and disputes. In the four years since the last edition, many important judgments have been handed down by the courts, and the process of adjudication has developed considerably.
Since the last edition, JCT and other contracts have been amended to take account of the changes to the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 made by Part 8 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. Major changes were made to the payment provisions.
In writing this book, legal language has been avoided, but reference has been made to legal cases, and the relevant citations are given so that anyone interested may do some further reading. All these references have been updated. A full table of cases is included at the back of the book. The contractor and sub-contractors are assumed to be corporate bodies and have therefore been referred to as ‘it’ throughout.
This book should be useful to architects, project managers, quantity surveyors, contractors, students and those building owners who would like to understand more about the workings of building contracts.
Construction Contracts Questions and Answers Third Edition PDF Free Download
