Who is at fault client or contractor?

I think both the contractor and the client were at fault, but the greater irresponsibility was by the client. if the payment was to the contractor through interim valuations then the client was bound to pay as soon as the valuation certificates are raised. delayed payments could have caused some strain on the contractor.

On the other hand, the contractor was not well prepared for the contract. even when payments are not forthcoming, the contractor should have put measures in place to ensure that work goes on as planned

The client cannot delay the valuation payments, otherwise the Contractor will slow down their production, retire some workers from site and cause delay to the Project. Another thing is if the Contractor was able to afford the men enough to cover the Client's demands.

It is clearly indicate the poor in terms and condition of execution of the project. There should be clear document for both parties in

a) delay in delivery

b) delay in payment

Service level agreement, Monitoring the progress, Penality will serve the both parties.

What will the next course of action - Both party can execute amend the order to include the above two points. ( win - win).

Client financial problems is a high risk factor that leads to project delay, clear documents about claim processing to allocate such risk and how to deal with it .

Risk contengcy in a contractor tool used to overcome one or two payements is essential in unstable economies. The client is at fault in your case, dispute resolution must be time extension and payment refund with interest.

In this case majority of blame lies on the client. The evaluations at the early stages when the contractor was chosen were not carried out extensively enough to identify is the contractor was actually capable of delivering the project on time. A very common issue in contractual agreements when the selection of contractors is carried out purely on cost basis as opposed to enhanced evaluation of risks associated with the selection of the given contractor. Now since the project is in all sort of problems, the costs increased i.e. additional cost spent for searching a new contractor. Next course of action should be to ensure regular audit of contractor capabilities and if required assis to develop the contractors capabilities, rather to search a new supplier which would incur further costs.

Yes, we shouldn't hire Contractors by cost basis only, we have to also analyze the risks involved in our activity and find ones that mitigate the risk along with us. Not necessarily low cost Contractors means high savings for the project.

Funds or money is the blood in construction projects no matter how small or big the project is.I quite disagree with colleagues who think the contractor must equally be blamed in the topic under discussion.90% blame must go to the client and 10% to the project consultant/managers or administrators.Some client would not head to consultant advice at any stage of the project.His actions can be a disincentive for both consultants and contractor.Again a lazy consultant in my opinion such as the one under discussion created part of the problem.The contractor is limited technically if the consultant doesn't approve what ever input this knowledgeable contractor may put across.Same if a client is not forth coming with payment but the most dangerous aspect is when both client and consultants are ignorant about both technical and contractual implications of their actions.In Ghana where under the district decentralization dispensation such situation do arise and it is the contractor who is always being blame unnecessarily.Projects carried out last year 2013 June are not paid how do you expect the contractor to still be on site doing what?

When they ran into a dispute and they only relied on contract and fight for winning the claims the project would be a disaster. At this it does not matter to which party is to blame. All will lose eventually and not to mention they have to go through a painstaking litigation process. Their lawyers would win! Can they solve the dispute without going through the litigation process?

Yes, if they are willing to sit together and focus on finding the solution instead of arguing the problem or contract clauses. Senior management from both sides should be involved and all efforts should be focused to find the solution. Re-establish the common ground and if the contractor unable to perform because of lack of capability, the client needs to facilitate this. Of course the commercial interest should not be put aside. But my point is if the contract is the source of the problem, then you should not use it. Either forget about it or create a new common ground then refine the contract.