The Project Manager instructed the Contractor to undertake construction work in the belief that the designs for this work (previously instructed many months before) would be sufficiently developed to allow adequate pricing information. Therefore no Project Manager’s Assumption was included. The Contractor has now submitted their quotation assuming the most expensive and time consuming option possible for this work, as no design information is still available. Is it too late for the Project Manager to somehow retrospectively introduce an assumption for the pricing of these CE so that at this time it is based on a cheaper and simpler solution and if this changes can then be a further CE to correct? Otherwise we have an inflated CE quote based on an unknown design solution, purely because the Contractor has not developed their own design in time.
May be a bit long winded approach and unsure what has happened regarding timelines. My suggestion would be that you instruct a revised quotation on the basis that a complete assessment cannot be made until the design is available. The instruction to have a Project Manager’s assumption that the design would not affect the Defined Cost of construction. This would effectively be a quotation for the design only. Once the design was available notify that the assumption needed to be corrected. This should result in getting a quotation for the design and then a subsequent one for the construction. Explain the rationale to the Contractor at an early warning meeting.
You may still be faced with an over designed solution that you need to deal with so you might also want to tighten the additional Scope being instructed.