The dispute needs setting out item by item and nobody has the format
Each item, each position, each response, in the form an adjudicator or a court expects.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
What's happening?
By the time an account is in dispute, dozens of variations, contra-charges, rates and quantities have been argued back and forth in letters. Nobody can see, item by item, who says what and why. Whoever decides the dispute will want exactly that.
A Scott Schedule is the usual answer: a table with one row per item, and columns for each side's position, reasons, evidence and the difference. It organises the dispute; it does not decide who is right. Any format the adjudicator or court directs comes first, and the totals must add back to the overall amount in dispute.
Leave it late and you build it in a rush. Weak items and arithmetic slips then surface in front of the decider, instead of while you can still decide what to support, qualify or drop.
The solution
Give each item one fixed number that never changes. Add columns for each side's position, the evidence, the calculation, the difference and the decision needed. Follow any format the adjudicator directs, and note the direction and version at the top. Keep agreed items apart from open ones. Make the totals add back to the items, so no agreement appears through arithmetic.
Where the dispute is already live, Final Account Claim builds the schedule with you. We check every item against its evidence, show the weak ones rather than hiding them, and reconcile the totals before it goes out.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
A dispute over a subcontractor's account has 47 items argued back and forth in 9 months of letters. The total difference is £268,000. The adjudicator's directions now require the items set out in a schedule.
What happens
- The Scott Schedule is drawn up with one fixed number per item. Its columns cover each side's position, evidence, calculation, difference and decision needed. The directions and version are recorded at the top.
- Six items, worth £14,000 of the difference, turn out to be arithmetic. Both sides agree the quantity and the rate, but one side has multiplied them wrongly. They are put right before issue.
- Four items appear twice under different names and are merged.
- Three items worth £21,000 have nothing behind them on the subcontractor's side but its say-so. The subcontractor decides to qualify them rather than press them.
- The totals are reconciled to the items at every stage, so rounding creates no false agreement. The schedule is issued in the directed format.
- The main contractor responds in the same rows, which for the first time puts both positions on one page.
The difference in figures
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Total difference in the letters | £268,000 |
| Arithmetic items reconciled before issue | £14,000 |
| Items qualified for want of evidence | £21,000 |
| Itemised to the adjudicator | £171,000 |
The outcome
Nineteen items are agreed on the documents before the decision, and £171,000 goes to the adjudicator itemised rather than argued.
Preparing the schedule exposes what 9 months of letters hid.