Notes

The mechanics, illustrated.

Short, illustrated notes on the FIDIC and construction-law mechanics behind claims — delay and disruption, completion and defects, damages and exclusions, and more. The principles, shown rather than told.

Printed contract pages and a bar-chart programme schedule on a desk

Delay · right of access

When the site isn't yours to build on

The Employer must give unimpeded access to and possession of the Site under FIDIC Sub-Clause 2.1 — leave obstacles across the works and the prevention principle makes the delay the Employer's, carrying time and cost under 8.4. And, more to the point, how such a claim is actually substantiated: contemporaneous records, a clean notice trail, and a Time Impact Analysis.

Design-build · Yellow Book

Errors in the Employer's Requirements

In a design-build contract you designed to the Employer's Requirements — so is their error your problem? Under FIDIC Yellow Book Sub-Clause 1.9, an error an experienced contractor exercising due care would not have discovered at tender carries an extension of time, Cost, and — unusually — reasonable profit. The tender-discoverability filter, and why 1.9 pays profit.

Completion · defects

Patent and latent defects

Patent defects are visible on reasonable inspection and fixed within the defects period; latent defects stay hidden and surface later, governed by limitation — six or twelve years in England, ten under UAE decennial liability. Baxall, Robinson v Jones, and FIDIC Clause 11.

Delay · liquidated damages

Time at large

When the Employer prevents completion and the contract can't extend the date, the fixed completion date falls away — time is at large, the Contractor need only finish within a reasonable time, and the Employer loses its liquidated damages. Peak, Rapid Building, Multiplex; and FIDIC 8.4.

Completion · taking over

Possession, or just access?

When the Employer moves in before the works are finished, does practical completion get 'deemed' — stopping liquidated damages and passing risk — or is it mere access, where the damages keep running? Skanska vs Impresa Castelli, and FIDIC 10.2.

Damages · exclusions

What “consequential loss” really means

In law, “consequential loss” is not “everything that follows” — it is the second limb of Hadley v Baxendale (special losses in both parties' contemplation). So an exclusion of consequential loss leaves normal, direct losses recoverable. With British Sugar, Hilton and McCain, and FIDIC 17.6.

Delay · weather

When the rain is the Employer's cost

Adverse weather normally gives an extension of time but no cost. Yet if an earlier Employer delay pushed the works out of the dry season and into the rains, the weather delay — and its cost — flow from the Employer's breach. A FIDIC note, with Ellis-Don and Koufos.

Case study · Land access

When “handed over” isn't lawful access

An anonymised design-build railway case study: how an Employer's failure to complete IFC PS5 land-acquisition and resettlement before handover deprived the Contractor of lawful access under Sub-Clause 2.1 — making the delay the Employer's under 8.4, not the Contractor's.

Time Impact Analysis

Time Impact Analysis: model the event, measure the move

How a prospective Time Impact Analysis works under AACE RP 52R-06 — model the event as a fragnet, insert it into the unimpacted CPM schedule, and the move in completion is the extension of time. Time-only, forward-looking, done while the project is live.

Concurrent Delay

Concurrent delay: time yes, money no

What concurrent delay is under the SCL Protocol — two events, each an effective cause of delay on the critical path — and the rule that follows: the Contractor gets the extension of time but not the prolongation cost, with the apportionment position varying across England, Scotland, the UAE and beyond.

Testing

Testing: who pays when it passes

How testing works under FIDIC Yellow Book Sub-Clause 7.4 — the 72-hour notice, the Engineer's power to order additional tests, and the pivot that decides who pays: if the extra test passes, the Employer wears it; if it fails, the Contractor does. With a railway rail-weld example.

Extension of Time

How an extension of time claim is built

How a FIDIC extension of time claim is assembled, step by step — notice inside the time-bar, contemporaneous records, critical-path cause and effect, then prolongation quantum — under FIDIC Sub-Clauses 20.1 and 8.4.

Delay Analysis

What a delay does to a programme

How a delay event reshapes a construction programme — a late Engineer's approval and FIDIC Sub-Clause 19 Force Majeure — shown step by step, with the forensic delay analysis that measures the loss.

Disruption

Disruption: same crew, fewer metres

How disruption is proved with the Measured Mile method: comparing a productive baseline period against a disrupted one to quantify lost productivity, to SCL Protocol principles.

Prolongation Cost

Prolongation cost, valued when felt

How prolongation cost is valued — at the time the delay was felt, not at the extended end — with time-related site, plant and overhead costs accruing through that period, per SCL Protocol Principle 18.

Variation vs Claim

Variation or claim — and when one becomes both

The difference between a variation and a claim under FIDIC — a variation is an instructed change to scope, valued under Clause 13; a claim is a request for time or money from an entitlement, pursued under Clause 20 — and the railway case where one event is both.

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