The Preliminaries to the Claim
The object of a claim document is to convince the respondent that the claimant is entitled to an award and the quantum of the award. It must also be remembered that the onus is on the claimant to prove his case. To help this objective it is vitally important to ensure that any reviewer of the claim who is not familiar with the project or the circumstances of the claim may properly understand the claim.
To achieve this, we must ensure that the document includes all the information that is necessary for a proper understanding of the matter and the document must lead the reader to a logical conclusion. Failure to comply with these two key points will at best lead to delays in settling the claim or, in the worst case, a rejection of the claim.
The Institute of Construction Claims Practitioners has a full paper on this subject, written by Executive Officer, Andy Hewitt.
To request a copy, please email your details to [email protected] with “Preliminaries” in the subject line.
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Managing Director, DGA Project Management Services | Claims Consultant | Mediator | Arbitrator | Adjudicator | Trainer | Founder of FIDIC Contracts Group on LinkedIn | RICS UAE Board Co-Founder | KL Tigers RFC Vets
8 年Very true. It always amazes me when claimants fail to make it easy for the recipients of their claims to read and understand their claims. For example, sometimes what is being claimed is not clearly stated. The time and/or additional payment being claimed ought to be in the Executive Summary if not in the cover letter itself. Sometimes you will find a statement like "The cost being claimed is in Appendix 4" and then you discover that you have to leaf through 800 pages just to find that Appendix as there are no file tabs and when you find it you still cannot find the figure until you find the last page of Appendix 4. The levels of frustration by that point are beginning to build and any good will is beginning to evaporate as you realize how difficult it is going to be to read this claim, let alone analyse it and approve any payment. It's a bad start.