Monday 15 October 2012

Built in Britain - BBC programme

An interesting BBC documentary on engineering challenges in Britain eg CTRL/Olympics. Great messages like our project, alignment of objectives, incentivisation and NEC. What more can you ask for...?!

Enjoy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01ngs45/Built_in_Britain_Episode_2/

Monday 8 October 2012

Starting work before the contract is agreed

Dear all,

Seems quite topical at the moment but I was wondering what sort of percentage of jobs actually commence without having a contract in place? I've never been involved in a job that hasn't had the award letter in place (and therefore a contract) before commencement, but a few that didn't have the formal agreement executed. To allow contractors to start without at least an award letter in place has to be bordering on negligence, or at least madness! Why would a contractor be motivated to knuckle down and agree a few outstanding matters once his feet are under the table and he has commenced work on site - he has the client over a barrel and who let him get to that position?

Would be interesting to see what people think on this, quite how many projects are without an award letter, and please don't refer to (what I think are utterly useless) letters of intent as we've had some banter on that before!

Rob