Projects and Honeymoons

You've entered into Contract with the other Party and have barely time to finish your cigars between champagne toasts and endless backslapping...that's how it will be for some of the members who've signed on the dotted line, but for you on site it is and will be a somewhat different story.

There has to be some "joy" in securing work but how that is then approached can vary.

You may raise a matter with your supervisor that "such-and-such, on the other side, hasn't done this-and-that, so I want to notify them of their failing" to which your supervisor may well say "look, we haven't given them XYZ and so if we notify them of their failing they will throw the book at us for our failing, so let this one slide for the moment".

It isn't so much of being beware of a sentence that begins with the word "look" (not that that shouldn't be taken into account), but it is more of an indication that many people believe that the start of a Project is like a honeymoon and everyone should get along and try to accommodate each others' foibles and leave the acrimonious bickering towards the end of the marriage...er...Project.

That is simply the wrong way to go about things.

It isnt a case of trying to being adversarial when raising a notice under the Contract (even if the other side thinks exactly that) it is just a case of doing it when you can, else, you won't be able to do it when you can't.

It may seem self-evident but the amount of times an early issue is raised late in the Project - especially when the other side may well have had a change of staffing - the simple reply will be "you didn't give notice at the time, so we will either have to ignore/reject it or else leave until we are closing out the final account".

This issue then becomes nothing more than a bargaining chip and many aspects of its impacts at the time get lost in the mists of time.

A simple-ish workaround of this is to begin a regular, weekly submission of "Items of Concern" and compile a cover letter with a list of issues that may have caused concern for whatever reason (along with how/when these were discovered i.e., email, whatsapp, site observation etc.).

The hope is that having a regular submission of "general" items does not cause the other Party to take offense and allows you to even include issues that may only have come to light one, two or three weeks after their occurrence but were only known about by you, now.

Again, a simple adage is "better to have but not need than need but not have".

If the other Party ever objects to this line of submission, as difficult as it may be to continue under such circumstances, especially if your supervisor is more sympathetic to the other Party than their own colleague/subordinate, you must perservere and, if needs be, find another way to make such submissions i.e., weekly commercial / schedule meetings.

The other point to make is that if the other Party continues to object to this, it may well, not always, give a good indication of how "open" they will be in addressing clearcut entitlement to time/cost as and when it happens i.e., they will obfuscate matters, deflect, reject saying details not sufficient (see RFIs/RoWDs) and try to browbeat you into withdrawing said notification or else accepting their "determination" on matters.

All of the above dovetails with RFIs, RoWDs to become Contemporaneous Records and will put you in good stead in the months or years to come when closing out the Project and, most importantly, getting paid what you are owed.