It is known that construction projects are highly complex in nature and the complexity varies from the scale of the project. In every construction contract, the primary basis of the contract such as the price, time, and quality are agreed upon between the parties when the contract was established. Any impact on the agreed basis necessitates an amendment to the contract. The amendment can be processed through a Variation Order and/ or an annexure to the Contract. To the extent that, if agreed procedures are being followed by the Parties, and the parties have an agreement to the change, executing a change to the Contract would not be a miracle nor difficult, but can be done without conflicts.
There may be situations where parties may not agree with each other in agreeing with a change that one party requires whilst another party may deny it. These are quite common in the construction context for which almost most of the contracts allow the aggrieved party to pursue a claim asserting their entitlement under the contract. The contract would not say in detail what level of records to be maintained or to be provided for substantiating such claims. This is because in construction each issue arising due to various reasons is unique and that appropriate records are highly important to avoid becoming unsuccessful on such claims and to avoid conflicts between the parties.
The contractor’s price agreed under the contract is based on the resources required to complete works at certain productive rates to meet on the time. Time is priceless and thus any losses to the time without production will affect the project budget. It is not correct to say that such situations would affect one party and will benefit another party, rather it will affect contracting parties in many ways. Thus, parties are to effectively administrate the contract to minimize risks arising from the construction process. Almost all contracts share risks between parties depending upon the procurement system, whether it is a traditional design-bid-build contract or the advanced Design-bid-build contract, and the terms and conditions of the contract.
To overcome complex situations, avoid conflicts, and maintain relationships between parties, record keeping is very essential. The statement record keeping is not something keeping a piece of paper in a file rather records should be properly documented and maintained appropriately. Moreover, in construction record-keeping is dynamic processing, i.e., based on the activity.
For instance, if a gang, a combination of labor and machine, was assigned to work on the installation of an underground pipeline, the productivity achieved for all activities such as excavation, pipe installation, and backfilling needs to be recorded together with details of resources deployed for those activities i.e., number of resources worked and the time spent for each individual and a gang together with all other issues that were encountered during the course of construction should be recorded to measure the progress versus the planned productivity. Maintaining such a detailed and organized level of records will help to establish facts that are highly important in a claim and/or dispute situation. Lack of maintaining such records would not only develop conflicts among parties but would also create room for challenges among parties endlessly.
SVEDS are highly capable of establishing a system for effective record-keeping necessary for various activities. Our involvement will help you to establish setting targets, and resources projection, and overall, a progress monitoring system will be established to continue monitoring the actual situation versus the plan.
