Events

NEC3: ‘An introduction to contract administration’

A half day seminar at Malone House, Barnett Demesne, Belfast

Seminar times –

13.30 – 16.30 Wednesday 27 January 2010

9.30 – 12.30 Thursday 28 January 2010

13.30 – 16.30 Thursday 28 January 2010

The NEC suite of documents has been around for over 15 years in one guise or another.  The documents are endorsed by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), which is an independent office of the Treasury, and used extensively within both the private and public sectors. The current edition is NEC3 which came out in June 2005 and complies with the Government’s Achieving Excellence Principles.

The Engineering and Construction Contract (ECC) is one of the NEC3 suite of documents.  This contract is to be ‘administered’ by a Project Manager and Supervisor though the Project Manager takes the principal role. Both hold responsibilities for issuing certificates. The approach is significantly different from that under a typical JCT contract although there is no reason why an architect should not carry out either role for a building project under the ECC.  That said any architect who does take on ‘administration’ duties under the ECC needs to make themselves fully aware of the contract provisions.  The drafting of the ECC is very much procedural and management driven.  Therefore architects need to approach the ECC with a new and different ‘mind set’.  The unaware and uninformed may well be caught out.

The seminar builds on the ‘NEC Awareness’ seminar held in November 2009, though it is not a prerequisite to have attended that seminar.  The areas to be addressed are the ECC administration provisions dealing with quality control, defects, payment and compensation events.  The term compensation event is used to cover what would otherwise be referred to as the valuation of variations, extensions of time and loss and/or expense.

Programme

09.30 (or 13.30)          Quality testing and defects

10.15 (or 14.15)          Payment

11.00 (or 15.00)          Break

11.15 (or 15.15)          Compensation Events

12.30 (or 16.30) End

Speaker Michael Dunn BSc LLB LLM FRICS FCIArb is a consultant with Rex Procter & Partners based in Bradford.  He advises on construction contracts and consultant appointments. He is a visiting lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Central England on their post graduate architecture courses, and a visiting lecturer at Leeds Metropolitan University on its MSc in Construction Law & Dispute Resolution course.  He is an RIBA Specialist Practice Consultant.