What do you need from us to answer a counterclaim against our account?
First, the claim, counterclaim or referral exactly as it arrived, and every date that is running, because we fix the timetable from them before anything else.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
The answer
Then send the rest in one go. That means the subcontract, with every schedule and amendment and any main contract terms it brings in. It means your applications, the Payment Notices and Pay Less Notices you received, the deductions taken and what was actually paid. Send the correspondence as the original emails, with their attachments. Send the site records exactly as they were kept: diaries, allocation sheets, handover and snagging records, delivery tickets and photos. Last, send your own figures and any claim of your own, as spreadsheets rather than PDF printouts. A counterclaim often sits beside money you are owed, so we set one against the other before anything is conceded or settled. After that, be available for quick questions while we work through the file. Where the only evidence on a point is someone's later memory, we say so plainly.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
A mechanical subcontractor submits a £610,000 final account and receives a £175,000 counterclaim for late commissioning and damaged ductwork. The covering letter gives a response date.
What happens
- The counterclaim, its appendices and the covering letter are forwarded that afternoon, exactly as they arrived. The timetable is fixed from the response date.
- The subcontract, the notices and payment record, the email threads whole, the commissioning diaries as kept and the account spreadsheet follow in one go.
- The counterclaim is set against the £610,000 account, so the same sum is not answered, or deducted, twice.
- Two heads rest on a site meeting nobody minuted, and the answer says so plainly instead of presenting memory as a record.
The outcome
Every head of the answer is traced to a document the subcontractor sent, and the two that rest on recollection are marked as such.
To have a counterclaim against your account tested and answered head by head, see our Counterclaim Defence service.