Page 119 - Civil Engineering Project Management, Fourth Edition

Civil Engineering Project Management
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of instruction to the contractor and daywork sheets, and reports of tests, may
all help to ensure that decisions on claims are supported by factual evidence.
All must be filed in first class order. When meetings are held with the agent or
contractor to discuss claims, minutes of the meeting should be drawn up by
the RE, at latest by the day after the meeting, and submitted to the contractor
for agreement. Inevitably the submission by the contractor of unreasonable
claims is bound to cause a degree of coolness between the RE and the agent.
But care must be taken not to let the situation decline into open hostility.
Under the ECC conditions the project manager ‘may, having stated his
reasons, instruct the contractor to remove an employee’ (Clause 24.2). These
reasons need to be soundly based and convincing if the project manager is not
to sour his relationship with the contractor, especially if he requires removal
of the contractor’s agent, because the contractor has no redress if he thinks the
reasons stated are inadequate.
The ECC conditions also try to deal with the problem of excessive claims by
the introduction of ‘early warning meetings’ to deal with any matter which the
contractor or project manager becomes aware could increase cost, cause delay or
impair the performance of the works (Clause 16.1). ‘Either the Project Manager
or the Contractor may instruct the other to attend an early warning meeting.
Each may instruct other people to attend if the other agrees’ (Clause 16.2). Those
who attend ‘co-operate in making and considering proposals’ to avoid or reduce
the effect of matters raised, ‘seeking solutions that will bring advantage to all
those who will be affected’, and deciding actions (Clause 16.3). Presumably the
agreement of the third party to attend must be sought and the aim of the process
is to resolve potential claim situations and disputes by agreement.

9.10 The resident engineer’s staff

Except for the largest jobs the RE’s staff on UK sites will be quite small. Two or
three assistant engineers and two or three inspectors might be needed for
a £25 million project in the UK; but much depends on the nature of the work.
There is usually a considerable amount of work for assistant engineers to do
during the first one-third period of a project, tailing off thereafter. On large jobs
a measurement engineer or sometimes a quantity surveyor having experience
of civil engineering work, may be needed to handle the checking of interim pay-
ments, dayworks sheets, etc. This can be important because, if the RE has only
a couple of assistant engineers, he will not want to lose one on office work.
A driver and suitable vehicles may be essential for getting about the site or
carrying surveying equipment, taking concrete test cubes and soil samples for
testing, etc. A chainman-cum-teaboy on the RE’s staff must not be forgotten
for his presence on even the smallest site can be a great asset. It is usual for the
chainman, and the driver plus vehicle, to be provided by the contractor under
the contract, and woe betide the drafter of the contract documents if he forgets
to include provision of these in the specification.