fifth national construction conference construction ... jct and nec... · • donald keating always...

© John L Riches102/02/2018

Fifth national construction conference – Construction

Category 2018

JCT and NEC:

What’s the difference and does it matter?


Joint Contracts Tribunal (JCT)

• JCT has been authoring contracts since 1931, yes 86 years

• It produces the only standard contract that represents consensus of the UK construction industry

• It also strives to set the ‘Standard’ in terms of fairness and risk allocation


The Members

• British Property Federation

• Contractors Legal Group Limited

• Local Government Association

• National Specialist Contractors Council

• Royal Institute of British Architects

• Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors

• Scottish Building Contract Committee Limited


What do you want from a Contract?

• Legal rights, obligations and remedies or a procedural manual?

• Imposed bureaucracy or your own procedures?

• Do you want to allocate risk on the basis of those most able to bear the risk, bear that risk?

• Price risk do you want to take all the risk or do you want to buy off that risk?


Straight from the tin

• Do you want something that you can use straight from the tin that also does what it says on the tin?

• Somewhere to execute the document

• Complete no need for hybrid clauses in order to get it to work

• Insurances already dealt with

• Assignments, collateral warranties and third party rights already dealt with


Hybrid Clauses

• Donald Keating always advised parties who intended to sign up to construction contracts that they should either use an unamended standard form of contract, or their own homemade contract conditions, and that to attempt a mixture of both was usually a recipe for disaster. This case, arising out of a contested adjudication decision, a CPR Part 8 claim for declarations by one party and a CPR Part 7 claim for enforcement of that decision by the other, is a graphic demonstration of the wisdom of that advice. It also raises a point of wider interest as to the proper approach to be adopted by a party who has lost an adjudication on a point of law.

Hon Justice Peter CoulsonFenice Investments Inc v Jerram Falkus Construction Ltd [2009] EWHC 3272 (TCC) (07 December 2009)


What you can buy into with ease

• Lump sums • Remeasurement• Design at any level• Small, medium and large• Term Contracts• Cost Plus• Management • Partnering • Integrated contract suites


Do You Change Your Mind?

• Well don’t. Variation or change is problematic under any contract.

• If you make changes do you want to pay value or cost, or even cost on cost?

• Do you want simple procedures to deal with variations, delay and loss and expense or complex procedures.


John L Riches FRICS FCIOB FCIArb MAEHenry Cooper Consultants Ltd

Cardiff House51 Thorpe Road

Norwich NR 1 1UG

(Phone 01603 660024(Mob 078315228607Fax 01603 765291

7 Direct Fax 01603 63440*email [email protected]

fifth national construction conference construction ... jct and nec... · • donald keating always...

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