Hong Kong Building Tender

Building magazine has published the article Time at Large Time for a rethink written by Hamish Lal a partner in the international arbitration practice at Akin Gump. The article looks at what Lal describes as a misconception regarding time at large for contractors and whether an employer delay affects its entitlement to damages.Lal first describes the prevention principle the orthodox view that if the employer delays the contractor in the completion of the building works then the employer cannot point to the contractors failure to complete the works by the contract completion date as if its own default had never happened.Related to this is the view that if there is an absence of a contractual extension of time regime for the employers delay then the liquidated damages regime falls away such that the employer may have a right to claim unliquidated damages from a reasonable date for completion.Lal notes however that the most senior construction judge in England and Wales recently spoke about how this view may not actually be correct. As a result he writes practitioners clients and experts will of course now employ the judges analysis and look at time at large in a fundamentally different way. As a result the gaps to defeat liquidated damages are getting ever smaller.