Wednesday 22 August 2012

Student NEC research

Dear all,

Another student in need of 10 mins of your time please.....

My name is Shane Murphy and I am a Masters student in Queen's University, Belfast studying Construction and Project Management. I am currently carrying out a dissertation entitled "NEC Contracting and Proactive Project Management: A Critique of the Inclusion of Dispute Resolution Boards in lieu of Adjudication". I am currently at the questionnaire stage of the research project and I am looking for professionals views in order to get a broader perspective of the industry's perception on the topics. The questionnaire is a simple online submission based questionnaire which should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete.
Regards,
Shane Murphy


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEt6Z2hKZDVFSlp1eTlRSFNlUWZSRlE6MQ

Thursday 16 August 2012

Hong Kong Government's video of successful NEC trial

Dear all,

An interesting video of Hong Kong Government's successful trials using NEC. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDwbzFQXxeI

Tuesday 14 August 2012

Adjudication, but not as we know it

I hear a good few horror stories with adjudication. Let's pile up as much stuff as we can and fire it over as our claim to the adjudicator, the other party follows and also shoves in a huge counter claim for the hell of it. Resources from both parties kiss goodbye to both their loved ones and sleep, each for 2 weeks at least. Just what is this hidden cost worth? I don't see the criteria of becoming an adjudicator is to be a clone of Superman so just how can any half decent adjudicator really sift through mountains of rubbish to determine truly what the facts are, the primary role as I see it? Too much is left to chance and errors surely are likely. Also, guess who the beneficiaries are as usual? Those who derive an income from this process, of course.

So why not strip out the quantum side of the claim at least, why not limit the submissions, why not go to a learned adjudicator on a point of principle only? Here's our submissions, have a good read through as they are fairly limited, talk to us, then determine the facts, apply the contract/law and come up with a sound, reasoned award that we can rely upon. Isn't this really what pure adjudication should really be all about? The parties surely then can much more economically determine the quantum arising once a sound decision is in place. Why would you really want an adjudicator at £lots/hr wading through countless spreadsheets of cost?

Too simple or too much of a lost opportunity to ambush/bushwack/win by default/earn ridiculous fees?!

Rob

Monday 13 August 2012

Concurrency & prospective/retrospective delay analysis

If you get chance have a look at a good article by Lowsley/Sadler in Civil Engineering Surveyor July/August 2012 called 'Back to the future - the why and when of prospective delay analysis'.

There's a comparison of a few of the main forms of contract and how they deal with these topics. NEC3 ECC is of course a prospective approach and very sensible that is, though of course is far from easy. Best advice from SCL is the prospective approach too. The wait and see retrospective analysis in other forms of contract in my experience serves only to promote uncertainty, many issues merge into one and the elongated client side consideration does nothing to help this.

On the concurrency issue, lots of press on this at the moment, I like the authors' simple quote on this, in that concurrency "...can never feature under forms of contract such as NEC3, which only provide a prospective mechanism for their evaluation of additional time and money".

Simples....!