Blog Author: Richard Saxon CBE – JCT Chair You may not know that I have been a long-time fan of American Football. The game is sometimes called ‘violent chess’ as it’s based on pre-planned ‘plays’ by one side’s offence team and the other’s defence team. The plays are radioed into the quarterback, the leader of the offence, by a coach on the side-line and the whole team must remember the moves implied by the coded name of the play, then execute it flawlessly. All the…
London’s last surviving working mill gets an upgrade with a new community centre, built on a JCT Intermediate Contract. The new community centre at Brixton Windmill has been a project many years in the planning for the Friends of Windmill Hill (FoWH), which was completed last year with funding from Lambeth Council. The charity is responsible for the preservation and maintenance of the Grade II listed windmill, the last remaining working flour mill in London. The brief for the new community centre was to provide…
Partner, head of construction, CMS-CMNO Chair, JCT Drafting Sub-Committee In a special edition of ‘JCT Interviews…’, we talk once again with Victoria Peckett, chair of the JCT Drafting Sub-Committee (DSC), to update us on JCT’s current work and what we can expect from the next edition of the JCT contract suite. JCT: Victoria, thanks for joining us again. You are about to embark on your next term as chair of the DSC. What do you find enjoyable/rewarding about the role, what are the biggest challenges?…
This residential property, built for a British-raised Kenyan working for the UN, combines a mixture of renovation, extension, and smart sourcing of labour and materials to provide luxury on a budget. Key to saving costs was the use of a JCT Minor Works Building Contract with contractor’s design. The large site for this property, set in well-healed Nairobi suburb, already contained a bungalow which presented two initial challenges. Firstly, budget precluded the option to completely remove the structure and secondly, the undesirable aspect of the…
Blog Authors: Graeme Young, Partner and Shona Murphy, Associate – CMS UK The UK left the European Union on 31 January 2020. Under the terms of the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement, the current EU public procurement rules have continued in force in the UK during an 11 month transition period. That transition period expires on 31 December 2020. While the UK may still be able to agree a limited form of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU by the end of this year, it seems…
JCT has launched the JCT Young Professionals Group (YPG), a new cross-industry networking initiative for construction professionals. The aim of the YPG is to provide a focus group for construction professionals within the first ten years of their career, those that are “young in the industry” regardless of age, and students, who are interested in elevating their professional profile, expanding their industry network and connecting with peers, and giving back to the industry through fostering a long-term engagement with JCT. In its role as a…
Blog Author: Peter Hibberd The construction industry, in keeping with most other industries, is going through one of the most challenging periods known to those currently employed. In April this year, construction activity, according to the ONS, fell by 40% month on month for new works and around 38% for repair works. Not surprising given lockdown, but a degree of miscommunication meant that many contractors stopped working when they could have continued, albeit with restrictions. As we emerge from lockdown, and business takes on a…
The site of Wroughton Academy in Gorleston, Great Yarmouth, was for many years shared by separate junior and infant schools. Having come under the same management recently, a project was commissioned to create a cross-laminated timber (CLT) structure to link the two buildings. A JCT Intermediate Building Contract with contractor’s design was the form of choice. The new CLT building symbolises the merging of the two schools under the Wroughton Academy umbrella by providing a new front and central focus point to the school, securely…
Blog Author: Richard Saxon, CBE The Office for National Statistics lists the construction industry as part of the service sector. This makes some sense in that we provide bespoke facilities to customers rather like a restaurant provides meals. However, our output is not a transient meal but delivers a very concrete asset which needs looking after for its whole life, a service we do not provide except reactively. We treat our output like a product, leaving the buyer to look after it. Owners are not…
Blog Authors: Marcus Harling and Alistair Russell – Burges Salmon LLP Electronic signatures, data rooms, Mercury execution? Evolving working arrangements mean we should all double check exactly how to execute construction documents. Whilst smart contracts and digital signatures are still very much the immediate future, for most people they did not arrive in time to help with the complexities of contract execution created by the COVID-19 lockdown. Suddenly the traditional way of contract execution became almost impossible and old questions on remote Mercury compliant execution…