NEC3 ECC Option E administering on behalf on the Employer.
For a period of 3 days during January-25, the Employer closed site due to bad weather (strong winds and stormy conditions) as it posed Health and Safety issues. The Contractor has subsequently issued a Compensation Event under Clause 60.1 (2) Employer did not allow access to site.
Edited to provide a bit more clarity: the project that we are working on is one of many on a wider site, and the Employer closed the whole site and not just this project specifically.
Interested in receiving people’s thoughts on the matter, specifically if this CE should be raised under 60.1 (2) or 60.1 (13)?
Thanks
Buelcros,
I’d say 60.1.2 as the employer prevented access to the site.
Contentious subject though as I personally have experience of a project with many of these types of events and it caused so much heated convos that two QS’es moved on from the project. Even the principle was a shock, almost as if you dare not claim time and money because nobody else is and managed to redeploy their guys.
If the site is closed, whether it’s a one in 10 year event in my opinion is irrelevant because the instruction to close the site has already happened and in closing the site, the contractor is being prevented from achieving completion due to restriction of access (60.1.2). If someone was to rebut in this situation that it was to be 60.1.13 and we have to demonstrate that the event was 1 in 10, then i’d see this as an attempt to send you down a rabbit hole rather than dealing with the fact that access was restricted and a subsequent decision caused the site to close.
I’d also be interested to hear others take on it too.
Unless your contract has been amended, ‘strong winds’ is not one of the standard ‘weather measurements’ and would not be a CE under 60.1 (13), so clause 60.1 (2) would be the likely event.
As you are have a main option E, then the CE ‘cost’ assessment essentially increases the (Employer’s) ‘budget’. It may be, however, that ‘time’ is contractually critical, especially if there are delay damages under Option X7 or Key Dates, so the CE would assess the ‘time’ effect accordingly.
Thanks for the responses. Apologies, should have clarified further in my initial query, wind measurements are included in the weather measurements. And yes, time is contractually critical. Taking this into account, is there a case for the CE to be raised under 60.1 (13)?
In your case I would notify a separate CE for access and a further CE for weather conditions.