Page 74 - Civil Engineering Project Management, Fourth Edition

Preparing contract documents
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personnel may also be included. This contract can be let while detailed design
of the project is still ongoing, and can therefore contribute to early project com-
pletion. Other advantages are that some excavation can be left open for the
civil works tenderers to view, so minimizing the risk of claims for unforeseen
ground conditions, and arrangements can be made for temporary storage of
pipes and valves, etc. the employer orders which the main contractor has to
incorporate in the works. However a site contract must be completed before
the main civil engineering contract is let.
Co-ordination requirements

When separate plant supply contracts are let, the main civil contract must
include all details of what the civil contractor must do in connection with such
plant. Among the matters to be specified and allowed for in the bill of quan-
tities are the following:
• Items requiring the civil contractor to take delivery of plant, offload, store,
protect, and insure it.
• Items requiring the contractor to check deliveries of plant as invoiced by
the supplier, inspecting items for any damage, and drawing the attention
of the employer’s engineer to any such, and to missing items.
• Where the plant supplier is to erect his plant, the main civil contract must
state what services the civil contractor is to provide the supplier with, such
as – access, scaffolding, lifting gear, power and lighting, water, use of the
contractor’s canteen and toilets, etc.
• Where pipes or other plant items have to be built in the civil works, the
contract must make clear whether such items have to be built in ‘as the
work proceeds’ or whether a hole can be left for a pipe to be ‘built in after’.
The contract drawings should show how the latter has to be done, and
who is to be responsible for positioning any such item correctly.
The ‘interface’ between all separate contracts has to be carefully checked to
ensure that all matters to be done by the plant supplier or civil contractor are
properly covered and none missed out. The principal responsibility for this will
lie upon the employer’s engineer in charge of design and the drawing up of
contracts. On a large scheme where several teams of engineers work on differ-
ent parts of the design, checking that the interface between their separate parts
match, is equally important.

5.7 The specification of general requirements

In Section 5.5 some problems of writing specifications have been mentioned.
A specification usually comprises two distinct parts – Part 1: all the general