Construction Contracts and Dispute Resolution

Construction Contracts and Dispute Resolution
Structured essay on the construction industries reliance on the standard forms of building contracts

Introduction
This report will cover a multitude of contract disputes which occur within the construction industry and how the JCT Standard Building Contract is used to aid settling contract disputes in a fair manner. It will analyse and discuss a scenario where the contract is used to settle a dispute between two parties and show how the contract shares the fault of the dispute between Contractor, Employers and cases where the fault is neutral. It will discuss the good and bad features of the contract and finally it will discuss corporate manslaughter and corporate homicide and what impact they have in the construction industry.
Resolving the Contract Dispute
Failure of Payment
At week 31 of the contract, the Employer failed to pay the Contractor the sum of £350,000 for works done, which resulted in the Contractor halting work on site until said payment had been made. The Employer was unable to pay the Contractor due to a clash flow problem and was unable to resolve this situation for 4 weeks, by when the payment to the Contractor was made and work was able to continue onsite. Due to this problem the working schedule was delayed by 4 weeks.
The Contractor has viewed that Employer did not comply with Clause 4.13.4 “Not later than 5 days before the final date for payment the Employer may give notice to the Contractor…” (JCT 1, 2009) as no effective notice to withhold payment was given by the Employer. A sum due under a construction contract was not paid in full by the final date for payment to the Contractor to which a notice was compiled of their intention to stop work on the grounds of non-payment and given to the Architect, which is similar to the case of C J Elvin Building Services v (1) Peter Noble (2) Alexa Noble where the Noble’s refused payment to Elvin for work done and

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