Mon 13th March

Most of us who are at or near the top of our organisations whether as chairman, MD or other positions with an elevated title usually find ourselves divorced from the day to day fee earning tasks which attracted us to the job in the first place. Like many others in my position I relish the idea of getting back to working on the tools. An opportunity presented itself a few days ago when I received a phone call from one of my colleagues. He had been contacted by a client who required a PPC 2000 contract to be amended to make it cost reimbursable with a target cost.

I am not too familiar with this contract, my limited knowledge resulting from reading it when first published in 2000. It is intended for use on partnering contracts which filled a need but in my impression it is something of a hotch potch. None the less on my basic principle of rarely turning down any opportunity I readily undertook the task. Clients are not too keen on paying by the hour without the costs being capped and I found myself quoting a lump sum fee without much idea of how long the task was likely to take. My intention however, come what may, was for the cost to be less than the fee.

My first task was to locate the payment mechanism in the contract. I was a little surprised to discover that the contract does not include for the provision of a lump sum, or a procedure such as remeasure to arrive at a sum, or payment of the contractor's costs. There is provision for a price framework leaving it to the parties to operate on a BIY basis as to what is to be included. It didn't take long to draft up a few clauses to provide for the contractor's costs to be the basis of the payment arrangement. Defining what constitutes contactor's costs is a little trickier. Those of us with QS training would be horrified at the idea of contractor's costs being whatever the computer divulged at the press of a key. We like things to be more structured. The final task was to draft a pain share/gain share clause, which didn't prove to be very difficult. In my early QS training my old boss Sydney Plaister insisted on everything being thoroughly checked and finished on time. Any slippage on either front was a hanging offence. These lessons were so drilled into me that they have for many years been second nature. The job was checked, finished on time and we succeeded in making a profit.