The project was a £25m major airport infrastructure (runway) upgrade scheme. The contract form was NEC3 Option A.
The project suffered major delays due to the discovery of existing services within the airport runways, which lead to a protracted period of investigative works and re-design of the upgrade scheme.
This led to the Contractor re-sequencing what was already a complex phasing scheme (it was a live operating environment), and as a result of this, re-sequencing significant delay and disruption were incurred by the Contractor.
Due to the nature of the project being in a live environment, the consequence of significant delay and disruption of the works had a knock-on effect on the Client’s operation, particularly in peak holiday seasons, e.g. flights were being cancelled and diverted as extensive sections of the runway were out of bounds.
The works were approximately 7 months behind schedule, with damages totalling and levied at around £3.5 million. The Client alleged that it was the Contractor’s culpable delay was the actual delay to the Completion Date rather than the service discovery.
Our Director was instructed as Expert Witness to carry out an independent analysis of the actual cause of delay and extension of time entitlement arising as a consequence of discovering the existing services.
As part of this analysis was also to consider the Client’s position on culpable delay.
The report produced by TREO was initially presented as part of the negotiations between the parties; however, this did not yield a satisfactory result; therefore, the dispute proceeded to Adjudication, and we, along with the opposing Expert, were required to present our findings to the Adjudicator and the other party.
Against the other Expert’s, our opinion and evidence were preferred by the Adjudicator, and the Contractor was able to secure a full extension of time for the delay arising from the discovery of the services.
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