A Introduction

17.1 Following the Contractor’s default, the Company is faced with the difficult decision of how best to exercise its contractual rights to recoup or minimise its losses. One of those rights is usually to take possession of the work, irrespective of the state of construction it may be in. However, the exercise of legal rights of possession following the Contractor’s default is inherently difficult. The Company may therefore prefer to negotiate a consensual transfer of possession with the Contractor. From a legal viewpoint, such a consensual transfer is a form of delivery of the work.1 However, the authors will not describe such transfer as a form of delivery, so as to avoid confusion with the act of ‘delivery’ as defined in the contract terms. That topic is confusing enough already. We shall instead refer to ‘handover’.