Loading...
Claims on construction contracts: a new management framework
Vidogah, William
Vidogah, William
Authors
Editors
Other contributors
Affiliation
Epub Date
Issue Date
1997
Submitted date
Subjects
Alternative
Abstract
The contractor is required to submit well argued staternents of his entitlements upon the occurrence of defined events recognised by construction contracts. These are generally referred to as "clainis". It is a matter of record that the high incidence of disputes are the result of such claims. Two main strands of research and expert commentary has been followed to stem this tide. The first focuses on ensuring that the legal implication of terms of contract are understood. The other attempts to ensure that there is equitable risk allocation tinder construction contracts. Some reported research indicates that poor quality of claims management practice was perhaps one of the most important factors responsible for this phenomenon. Unfortunately, there has been no reported research into the most deficient aspects of the claims management process. The general aim of the research reported in this thesis attempts to fill the gap in the construction industry's understanding of claims management. The research involved: (i) an extensive review of the literature on claims, information management and technology, (ii) surveys and structured interviews of contractors and consultants and; (iii) case studies. Tile research confirmed the perceived central role of the Quantity Surveyor (QS) in claims management in addition to his traditional functions. It suggests that as a result of the QS's workloads, claims are usually left until projects are practically complete. Also contrary to conventional wisdom, most consultants to not object to tile principle of claims but rather reject claims because of lack of factual evidence to support them. This deficiency in clairn submissions frorn contractors is the result of lack of resources, the high cost of accessing the relevant paper records and/or the fact that information they submitted to support claims is usually captured by systems designed to produce internal accounting information which has, at best, only the most tenuous connection with claims. Further, although the technology required to reduce the expense of access to information from paper-sources is now well established, few contractors are even beginning to appreciate the values of these systerns. In addition no systems exist that are capable Of SUpporting every aspect of claims management. To improve the situation, the research proposes that : (i) a rnatrix of documents or their near equivalents that record resource use, performance and site events with reference to scheduled project activities be implemented; (ii) there should be a requirement to prepare and maintain resource-loaded CPM network schedules to aid the ascertainment of the cost and time impact of site events on specific activities. Standard specifications for these programmes and tile minirnurn requirements for keeping site records should also be incorporated with all standard forms of building and civil engineering contracts; (iii) to ensure an adequate standard of clairn documentation, it is desirable that tile requirements for claim submittals should be specified at project inception; (iv) the problerns with documents assembly, retrieval and access to data can be overcorne through the implementation of electronic document management systems; (v) ideological training of personnel to use IT tools and understand the need to change current clairris managernent practice should be undertaken and; (vi) the claims management function should be assigned to a member of tile project team specifically trained on large and mediurn sizes projects.
Citation
Publisher
Journal
Research Unit
DOI
PubMed ID
PubMed Central ID
Embedded videos
Additional Links
Type
Thesis or dissertation
Language
en
Description
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy