During the recent bad weather, the MET office issued a red weather warning. For the period this was in place Police Scotland advised that nobody travelled unless absolutely necessary. This resulted in the Contractor issuing a CE under Cl60.1(19) due to the fact it would be unreasonable for them to have allowed for such an event at tender. The Project Manager feels that even if the Contractor’s staff had made it to site, they would not have been able to provide the works due to the weather event, which is a Contractor risk since the CE notification has not come in under Cl60.1(13).
In assessing the impact of this CE can the PM use the fact that there was significant snowfall and the works would not have been progressing due to this anyway?
From the Contractor’s perspective, they only have to find one compensation event heading for it to be a compensation event and they obviously want it to be the one with the biggest impact !
Personally, I am not sure if a ‘red alert’ for a few days satisfies the criteria in the fourth bullet of 60.1 (19) AND it would also have to satisfy one of the first two as well. It is doubtful that it completely “stops the Contractor completing the works” so it would have to be the second. For this to be true, as legal interpretation is that the “date shown in the Accepted Programme” is the Completion Date - although in NEC4 they have bizarrely stated it is planned Completion - the delay caused by this red alert would mean that the Contractor over runs due to it i.e. they only had a few days terminal float in the programme to absorb it.
hello LA1. My view is that 60.1(19) is not satisfied for a few reasons. The snow did not “stop” “completion” of works. It just stopped the C from working for X days (i.e. Provide the Works). In addition, it is “one of the other CE stated in this contract” - so the CEN fails on that as well since all 3 bullets have to be satisfied (see use of “and” in between each one). As to cl 60.1.(13), it is likely that the snow was not significant enough. A red Police warning could be used to support an argument for event 19 but not for 13. Event 13 requires comparison of data - a relatively easy exercise to do. (Glenn Hide posted a LinkedIn piece on this, which I commented on as well - may be helpful to read this too).