Construction Contracts: Questions and Answers Second edition

by David Chappell

Construction Contracts: I have been pleased with the reception given to this Construction Contracts since the first edition was published.

Since then, I have given further thought to the kind of questions which should be addressed by a book such as this and the result is that the number of questions has been expanded from 125 to 200 arranged in an increased number of sections to make it easier to find all the questions concerned with each topic.

I have achieved that by the deletion of 33 questions, which seemed to be least useful, and the addition of a further 108 questions.

More than 70 additional legal cases have been included.

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 free, 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 career as a consultant, I have also dealt with a multitude of problems from contractors, subcontractors and building owners.

Construction Contracts includes some of the more common questions, together with a few unusual ones and several misconceptions.

Sometimes, there is a ready-made answer, either in the relevant contract or in the judgment of a court.

Other questions have no ready answer, and, in such cases, I have offered a view.

Within the limits imposed by the need to keep each answer reasonably short, I have endeavored to make the answer to each question self-contained.

This has resulted in occasional instances where answers have overlapped slightly when dealing with similar subject matters.