NBS has released its 2018 NBS National Construction Contracts and Law Survey, which offers serious food for thought and raises some awkward questions. Its introduction highlights the challenges created by Brexit, the Grenfell Tower disaster and major contractor insolvencies, and against this backdrop still tries to strike a positive note. NBS reminds us that “a well-structured legal and contractual framework is a necessary pre-condition of the creation of buildings that meet the needs of clients”, but many of its detailed findings suggest only small steps forward since its last report in 2015.

For example, respondents to the NBS survey say that disputes keep increasing, albeit at a slower rate than in 2015 and with two-thirds of respondents involved in no disputes at all over the last year. The top five reasons reported for disputes are extensions of time, valuation of final account, valuation of variations, defective work, and loss and expense. Yet most of these are not reasons for disputes but references to the contract mechanisms being called into question. NBS concludes, rather bleakly, that disputes “are a part of doing business in the UK construction sector”.

On possible ways forward, the NBS commentary cuts through the hyperbole publishers often use and exposes some fundamental anomalies in our thinking about procurement and contracts. It proposes that “legally explicit” collaborative working, combined with a better understanding of BIM and other technologies, offer a legal framework for the future. However, the report also illustrates why we are still a long way from achieving these goals.

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