Construction contracts

Most building contracts are signed in a hurry, on a form someone else chose, while the drawings and specifications are still changing. The document then sits in a drawer as the work goes on, and nobody reads it again until the project runs over budget, a subcontractor leaves the site or the client refuses to pay an invoice. By then the contract is no longer a plan but the evidence, and every gap in it becomes an argument.

A construction contract is also more than an agreement between two parties. It sits inside a stack of documents — tender, drawings, specifications, schedules, standard conditions — and sets the terms on which designers, subcontractors, suppliers and insurers are later drawn in. Drafting or reviewing one means reading the whole stack as one:

• the rules on how the works are procured — a general contractor, design and build, or separate trade contracts — and on who carries the design under each;
• the rules on standard conditions and model forms, and on the amendments that quietly shift their balance;
• the rules on which document prevails when drawings, specifications and correspondence contradict one another;
• the rules on price revision and indexation when the cost of materials and labour moves during the works;
• the rules on penalty clauses, caps on liability and exclusions, and how far courts enforce them;
• the rules on the qualifications and registrations a contractor must hold, and on the fate of a contract with one who lacks them;
• the rules on terminating the contract for convenience or for default, and on what is owed for the work done up to that point;
• the rules on contracts with private clients building their own home, and on the protections that cannot be contracted away;
• the rules on dispute clauses — binding expert opinion, mediation, arbitration — and on the steps they require before going to court.

Our lawyers can support you with this.