They're building a case to terminate us, and my site team hasn't noticed
Progress complaints, directions to redo work and letters to the company are landing on site, and none of it gets past the cabin.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
What's happening?
Your site team can deliver good work while the paper that decides a termination passes it by. A direction to remove defective work is agreed on the walkround and never done. A letter addressed to the company sits on the cabin desk. A complaint about progress gets answered by phone, with nothing in writing.
Each one is small on its own. Put together, they are what your main contractor needs for a default notice, the formal warning that comes before termination. And a notice left in the cabin can use up most of its short period before the office even sees it.
The solution
You do not need your site team to read every clause. Pick out the few events that can start a default case. They are a default notice, a direction to remove work, a complaint about progress or resources, and anything addressed to the company. On a one-page sheet, name who receives each, where it goes and by when. Then spend 20 minutes every Friday checking the week's paper reached the office and got a written answer, with a named deputy for holidays.
Termination Prevention builds that sheet and the Friday check from your subcontract, then runs them on your live job for a month to prove they work. The sheet gets the paper moving; what each clause means stays with your solicitor.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
A fit-out subcontractor's site team runs a £6,000,000 refurbishment from the programme. In one month, the main contractor's site manager emails the supervisor twice about slow progress on the fourth floor. The site manager also issues a written direction to take down a run of ceiling that is out of level. None of it reaches the commercial manager.
What happens
- A one-page sheet is built from the subcontract for the four events that can start a default case, each with who receives it, the route and the deadline.
- The two progress emails get a written answer that week, with the labour returns and the date the fourth floor was released to the subcontractor.
- The ceiling is taken down and refixed within the period the direction allows, with photographs and a signed inspection record.
- Every Friday afternoon, the commercial manager and the site supervisor spend 20 minutes on the week's paper. The assistant quantity surveyor is the deputy.
The outcome
A default notice about progress arrives 2 months later. The reply goes the same day with the earlier letters attached, and no termination follows.