Does anyone have a view or experience of the process following an instruction to stop for Contractor default (serious H&S breaches) and the 13 week period following? If the Contractor demonstrates improvements or remedies the breach in that period is the PM obliged to issued a notice to restart or can the Employer simply wait 13 weeks before terminating?
If the Contractor has demonstrated to the PM that the breaches have been rectified then why wouldn’t they want to instruct the Contractor to re-start unless the PM / Employer have another agenda?! Also note that the clause says the Employer may terminate, I’ve emphasised the word may as it means is allowed to, it doesn’t mean they have to.
If the Employer terminates for this reason and the Contractor can demonstrate that they had remedied things it could be classed as a repudiatory breach of contract. What the Employer does next in this case is vital to how the courts would look on things, if the Employer terminated and the project continued was continued with another contractor then the original Contractor would have a much stronger case than if the project was cancelled altogether. In either case however the Contractor is likely to be able to recover their losses from the Employer if they hadn’t remedied the initial breach.