My EXPERIENCE IN A FWC IN TURKEY PROJECT

Dear Robert, thank for supporting me..as i said, we only shared our experiences, we had gained many experiences during the implementation of the project. this was lesson learnt for us.

Dear Experts I wish to record my experiences in support of what Recep says. Please understand that we must very careful in the wording we use – right now Recep is being threatened with legal action because the Consortium Leader and SIM S.p.A. both want to distance themselves from responsibility. They use words like “defamatory and does not reflect the truth”. As you all know the EU/Contracting Authority makes a Framework Contract with a Consortium and they conduct all FWC business through the designated Consortium Leader – in our case this was Alanet. Recep and I had our contracts with consortium member SIM SpA. As is usual SIM S.p.A only has the responsibility to pay us according to the contract we have with them as a consortium member. They really have little else to do with our work. Recep is trying only to help you, his peers, by sharing his experience of late payment and other financial annoyances. He is being threatened with legal action because the experience he describes is not good for either SIM S.p.A or the Consortium Leader Alanet. You are all clever people; I shall do no more that describe experiences I had and I shall leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions – even though the conclusion may be obvious, in my opinion. I have email corroboration for everything I say here. Here is an extract from an email I sent to the Consortium Leader “My contract with SIM S.p.A. says: - "3.3 Payment of Fees - 15% will be paid upon approval of the “Inception Report” - 15% will be paid upon approval of each of the three “Interim Reports” - 40% will be paid upon Technical and Financial approval of the “Final Report” by the client" * * * (1) That is the signed contract I have with SIM S.p.A. (2) There is no statement in the contract, anywhere, that the phrase “financial approval” [ Technical and Financial approval of the “Final Report” by the client"] is to be interpreted as “final payment”. (3) Therefore, according to my contract with SIM S.p.A. I should have been paid when the consortium received Technical and Financial approval of the “Final Report” by the client. (4) Therefore SIM S.p.A. is in breach of Contract for many months (5) SIM S.p.A. suggests that "identification of “financial approval” with “final payment” has been a concept normally accepted by Clients and by all our experts during our participation to FWC, along the last 2 decades." (6) I hope that you have sufficient legal understanding to know that assertion by SIM S.p.A. is irrelevant to my contract. (7) It does NOT matter IF what SIM S.p.A says about it being accepted by others is true – it is IRRELEVANT to my contract. Please say that you now know the factual situation. Please say what you are going to do to get the payment (In addition they have to pay interest for the late payments for my financial losses, as Recep says) into my bank account. Then I shall be happy. Yours Faithfully Robert Jennings” I was trying to get the Consortium Leader Alanet to get Consortium Member SIM S.p.A. to rectify a breach of contract and pay me immediately. That did not happen. Instead the Consortium Leader decided to ask the Contracting Authority to adjudicate on the meaning of my contract with SIM S.p.A. I was complaining about a delay in payment – of some months. Instead the consortium Leader added to the delay. In my opinion the Consortium Leader has a moral duty to make sure that Consortium Members behave honourably. That did not happen – I was finally paid by SIM S.p.A only after they received the final payment from the Contracting Authority. Draw your own conclusions. Delays in payment matter a hell of a lot to me, I have cash flow responsibilities like everybody else and delayed payments mean that I get a bad reputation with my Bank and with persons who supply services to me. I was constantly complaining to SIM S.p.A that they were in breach of contract. Of course they were disagreeing. What I did not expect was they started to claim that I had messed up my responsibilities as Team Leader, “your shortcomings in submitting properly the final deliverables”. So, for your information I share with you my final email to SIM S.p.A on the matter. “Dear Mr. Matthias You are making two mistakes – in fact you are making the same mistake twice. You are not the competent authority regarding my conduct as Team Leader nor regarding the EU Regulation on delayed payments. TEAM LEADER RESPONSIBILITIES: The competent authorities regarding my conduct as Team Leader are the Project Director, Mr. Diego Gomez and the Contracting Authority < >. Please examine the communication records, on no occasion does the Project Director express dissatisfaction about the quality of materials provided to him. There is no record anywhere pointing to “your shortcomings in submitting properly the final deliverables”. On the contrary you are really referring to your own inability to find certain documentation when you needed to step in due to the absence of the Project Director. Recep very graciously agreed to sort out the material for you and you paid for that service. I understand very well what happened – you had little responsibility for us during the Project Implementation, so you had a bunch of unsorted documentation that you had received in cc. It is not easy to sort through many cc emails when you are not actively involved in the work being done. That was why Recep was gracious in agreeing to help. I refused to do so because you had failed in your responsibility to pay us in a timely manner. Of course, the project implementation was rather messy; we had a lot to do in a compressed time because it was not feasible to extend the project. Therefore, we settled into rather informal ways of doing things. Recep, being Turkish, was able to communicate and interact so much more efficiently than me and much documentation flowed between him and the Beneficiary staff. At one point the Contracting Authority < > had to chide us and request that formalities be observed by communicating through the Project Director. That was done, and at the end of the project, all required documentation was provided to Diego; he submitted it formally to the Contracting Authority who approved it – as fully discharging the responsibilities of the Contract. Your difficulty with sorting your email inbox is an entirely personal matter – it has no bearing on me. LATE PAYMENT DIRECTIVE The competent Authority regarding the EU Directive 2011/7/EU on combating late payment in commercial transactions is the EU. Once again you are mistaken when you say “this is not acceptable as not compliant with the contract. Your invoice is therefore rejected.” Our contract, under the Article 7, Jurisdiction says, “Any dispute … shall come within the jurisdiction of the Rome Court”. The EU says about the directive against late payment: - “To protect European businesses, in particular SMEs, against late payment and to improve their competitiveness, Directive 2011/7/EU on combating late payment in commercial transactions was adopted on 16 February 2011 and was due to be integrated into national law by EU countries by 16 March 2013 at the latest. This Directive puts in place strict measures which, when properly implemented by EU countries, will contribute significantly to employment, growth and an improvement in the liquidity of businesses.” Therefore, the Directive is integrated into the Rome Court and is part of Italian Law. It is compliant with our Contract. Again, I understand your belief in your own impunity. You claimed that all people employed by SIM have accepted that “Technical and Financial approval of the Final Report by the client" is to be interpreted as “final payment”. What you really mean is that you told them so and they had no choice but to accept your dictate. I do have a choice; the EU Directive protects me. I do not know yet the mechanics of implementation, perhaps the Contracting Authority has an obligation to deduct my outstanding invoices so that the final payment to the Consortium can be made. I will need to investigate that; in the meantime, I underestimated the penalty that should be applied. I spent a great deal of time trying to get payment of unpaid invoices – three days is a conservative estimate. Therefore, I reissue Invoice No 7 to add 3 working days @ EUR450 per day for administrative costs. Yours Faithfully Robert Jennings