The Client issued a prevention of access to site letter and defined this would be a CE under 60.1(2) due to COVID19. However the contractors management team has completed contract scope (i.e. TW designs, RAMS, preparation of CE’s etc) under instruction by the client PM, while access to site was prevented. The client QS is requesting the contractor to identify activities related to COVID19 not covered by contracted scope. The contractor has paid it’s management full time but accepts their working week is inefficient due to site access restrictions set by the client. The activities would have been completed by site managers throughout a normal working week while managing the site etc.
For example if 2nr site managers have completed activities taking 24 hrs over the course of 40 hour working week (Mon-Fri) the clients QS is arguing the 16hrs lost time is the contractors costs even though this has been caused by the impact of site restrictions.
Any advise on how to proceed and what our entitlements are would be appreciated.
Rather than getting caught up with trying to justify hours of working for each resource, consider the impact on time, that is the effect on the remaining work and how this is altered by the compensation event.
Once a programme assessment has been made then you can resource load a ‘before’ and ‘after’ version and calculate the Defined Cost of the variance, which should provide a starting point for the compensation event assessment, highlighting any imposed inefficiencies. This does assume, however, that you have a resource profile and can relatively easily populate this.
One disadvantage is that the cost of preparing quotations is not treated as Defined Cost under NEC3 options A and B, although it depends on the value of the CE and whether the matter also includes an assessment of time.