International Construction Law Review
EARLY COMPLETION AND ITS EFFECT ON THE CONTRACTOR’S RIGHT TO AN EXTENSION OF TIME
ANDREW STEPHENSON
Partner, Clayton Utz, Melbourne
1. INTRODUCTION
This paper addresses two questions related to early completion.1 The first is whether the contractor is entitled to complete early. The answer to this at general law appears to be yes, although in practice this will depend on the terms of the written contract. Whether the owner is obliged to facilitate early completion varies under the standard form contracts.
The second question is whether a contractor is entitled to an extension of time where it plans to complete early and can still do so, but is delayed in achieving completion. This depends on which party has the benefit of the “contingency” under the construction contract. This again varies under standard form contracts.
Since standard form contracts deal with these issues in different ways, it is appropriate to consider a number of example contracts used in different jurisdictions. This paper considers the following contracts:
- (a) PC–1 (Australia);
- (b) MDB2 (based on the FIDIC “Red Book”);
- (c) JCTSBC3 (UK); and
- (d) the Public Sector Standard Conditions of Contract for Design and Build, 5th Edition (2008) (“PSSCOC”) (Singapore).
It is important to emphasise two preliminary concepts before turning to a detailed analysis of these contracts.
2. BACKGROUND
2.1 Obligation to complete by a particular date
In all three jurisdictions the subject of this paper (Australia, Singapore and the UK), the various forms of contract in common use require the
1 The paper forms part of a broader investigation into time in construction contracts: see Andrew Stephenson, “Concurrency, Causation, Commonsense and Compensation (Part 1)” [2010] ICLR 166 and Ian Bailey SC, “Concurrency, Causation, Commonsense and Compensation (Part 2)” [2010] ICLR 197.
2 FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Building and Engineering Works Designed by the Employer—Multilateral Development Bank Harmonised Edition, June 2010.
3 JCT05—Standard Building Contract without Quantities (SBC)—Main Contract, Revision 2, May 2009.
The International Construction Law Review [2011
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