“I wasn’t told that it had been changed”. How many times have you heard that on site or by one of the designers? The route cause is likely to be poor communication or bad information management and it will inevitably lead to disruption:
Typical examples are:
Specialist designers not being told when their information is required by.
Failure to communicate design changes promptly to the construction team.
Inadequate communication about budget constraints and the status of value engineering items.
Incomplete or unclear specifications which result in assumptions being made and as a result reworking to achieve the clients’ requirements.
Inaccurate communication of labour, plant, or materials requirements.
Failure to inform subcontractors about changes in the project schedule or scope.
Lack of an information management system by any party can lead to the wrong drawings being used.
Variation orders are not managed effectively, it can lead to people working to out of date information.
If you have suffered disruption as a result of poor information management then recovery of your costs might be possible using the Delay and Disruption Protocol, written by the Society of Construction Lawyers. In it the appropriate impact borne by each party can be allocated from analysis of the site records and by reference to The Contract. The analysis to determine the responsibility is usually carried out by experts, but they require sound evidence. Collating the evidence can be problematic, which is why PvA Tracker was designed. It allows relevant site records to be collected using a mobile phone.
If you have become involved in a “project from hell” where the information flow has been poor or communication lacking, then find out how you might recover your costs by booking a demonstration of the app, or take a look at the website www.pvatracker.co.uk.