Currently I have a consultant who has put through time in the payment application for someone we have not agree to be working on the project.
This is an option E contract. We raised a concern with the design lead and the response from the consultant was to add someone else onto their design team.
When they told us they were going to do this, our response was ‘as they have acknowledged that there is a issue with the design lead we, the client. would not expect this to be a cost to the project’
This correspondence was done over email.
The consultant did not respond to this.
We now that that persons time on being booked to the project.
Do I have to accept this or am I able to remove this time from the payment application.
I am sure it is not was straight forward, but would be good to hear peoples view.
Hi @stephen.bentall and welcome to Reachback. Answer is on the assumption that this is an NEC4 PSC Option E.
It is not normal in ‘core’ NEC to require any form of agreement for a given person to work on a project, meaning that the Consultant can change as they see fit. Agreement (or, more likely, acceptance) can only be introduced by amendments, or by something in the Scope. I can’t comment on any amendments you might have.
If you do have something in the Scope then the definition of Disallowed Cost at 11.2(18) would allow you to deduct accordingly.
In terms of an ‘issue’ with the design lead, you could consider whether the 6th main bullet of 11.2(18) is in play, but you have to be ‘reasonable’ in doing that. For example, a brief time for one person to hand over to another would not, in my view, meet that definition. But it would if they spent weeks on it.