How many times do your receive a CD or several, upon opening you find you have folders in folders in folders, there is a tendency with the ease of which CD’s can be burnt just to post a CD out of everything.

As you’ll know not every document applies. Some main contractors issue document registers or list the drawings, often this can invoke drawings that don’t cover your work but may have pertinent information on, for example sectional drawings or ceiling finishes. Unless you sift the information and list the basis of your tender you could end up in a contract which is tied in with onerous consequences. Document control is essential to any contractor, this is crucial for effective risk and cost management. Contractors should record fully the documents they receive in at tender stage, with revision status and date received and most important of all the express tender documents that their offer is based on. Contractors should take the same care over what they send out to the supply chain as this can be extremely useful if supply chain companies later state they haven’t had a document.

There are a few eTendering websites which allow contractors to know exactly what they have sent out to whom and when. However contractors should be wary when using some such websites that they don’t inadvertently acknowledge that supply chain companies haven’t had access to documents, which can be patently obvious because of the way the eTendering website keeps track of what documents have been downloaded. This could later leave a claimant to make the argument that the buyer knew, by virtue of the website, that they hadn’t downloaded the documents and therefore their contract could not include these documents. We believe you should be very wary of eTendering websites which record documents that your supply chain have accessed/downloaded.

Geraldine Fleming of Knowles Limited – the dispute resolution experts says.
This area of document control can only be described as a nightmare. Too often at Knowles we are asked to advise post contract on issues where document control has failed. I fully endorse UK Estimating Support’s view that it is crucial to record the following:

(1) documents received at tender
(2) documents which you have priced on which should be listed in your covering letter
(3) documents received through the course of a project – including date received and internal distribution.

New methods of document control including provision of CDs, project extranets and even email can make life a lot easier at the top of the contract chain at tender stage, ie for the architect, main contractor and the employer. But lower down this chain often subcontractors, sub-subcontractors and suppliers are not given the necessary training to understand how systems work and the contract implications of provision of documents in this manner.

Without having a proper audit trail for all documents on every project it is often difficult and time consuming to find all necessary paperwork in order for correct contractual advice to be given in relation to problems that may occur.

We recently advised a curtain wall subcontractor whose contract obligations were not clear – all due to poor document control. Only when we obtained the emails of all those involved in the project were we able to clarify that the subcontractor hadn’t received a particular section through the building, and therefore hadn’t included for dealing with a brickwork feature detail that was only shown on the section drawing.

In summary take care in this particular area. Subcontractors need to protect themselves by clearly listing the documents priced on in their covering letter and ensuring that on receipt of the order from the main contractor, only those specific documents are referred to, otherwise the subcontractor’s obligations may be far wider than they had actually priced.

This is the next in a series of articles where we look at some ways you can reduce your risk in the contractual jungle. The articles are brought to you as collaboration between UK Estimating Support Ltd and Knowles Ltd.