At Claims Class we teach the following 4 key points in claim and response writing:

1. Make the reader’s job as easy and as pleasant as possible
2. Ensure that the submission is a stand-alone document
3. Assume that the reviewer has no prior knowledge of the project or circumstances
4. Irrelevant information should not be included in the document.

I have recently dealt with a claim which did not adopt these principles. In this article, I am going to share the results with you. They emphasise the importance of complying with these principles.

I was appointed by the Employer to review the contractor’s claim and produce a recommendation for issue by the Engineer. The claim was for an extension of time. This was due to missing design information which prevented the Contractor from ordering electrical equipment, delaying the project. I should say at the outset that the claim was a fair one and the contract entitled the Contractor to an extension of time under these circumstances.

The point I am trying to make however is that the Contractor did not make life easy for either me, or ultimately, himself.

When I undertook my first read through of the claim narrative, I immediately noticed that the Contractor had repeated the same things many different times throughout the claim. This was usually to no purpose. OK, having to read what amounts to the same thing several times is just annoying, but it is not making my job pleasant.

The narrative skipped around randomly and did not deal with things in any form of logic.

For example, demonstration of entitlement mixed up with a discussion of the cause of the delay and this is just confusing to a reader. A good narrative tells a story that takes the reader on a journey, which will eventually lead to a logical conclusion.

The narrative contained numerous abbreviations without any explanation. Maybe an electrical engineer would have understood the meanings of ‘DB’, ‘MDB’ or ‘SMDB’, but I had to ask someone in the engineer’s office to explain what these meant (electrical distribution board, main distribution board and sub-main distribution board). I did know what a bus bar was though! This is annoying and inconvenient. It is a perfect example of why you should assume the reviewer has no prior knowledge of the project or circumstances.

The claim did not contain substantiation of many statements made within the claim. For example, the Contractor stated that he had submitted notices within the time frames stipulated in the Contract. The claim did not include documentary substantiation of this so did not comprise a stand-alone document. I was therefore obliged to check the records to verify this assertion, which was a further annoyance. In the event, I found that the Contractor has not, in fact, submitted the notices within the time frames as he had stated.

This lead me to the conclusion that the Contractor was attempting to hide the truth, which made me look at everything else very critically.

You may consider that my comments are somewhat petty, but let me go on to explain. Based on the information submitted within the claim, plus additional information that I was obliged to find myself, I recommended an extension of time award which was significantly less than the Contractor had claimed. When the claim assessment was issued to the Contractor he immediately responded to say that I had not taken several things into account. I asked the Contractor to show me where these things were included in his claim.

They weren’t.

The Contractor subsequently submitted additional particulars and I revised the assessment. This did not end the matter though, because the Contractor remembered some other information that he had not included. The claim assessment went through three revisions before the matter was concluded. This wasted both my time and the Contractor’s and prevented the matter from being resolved for several months.

Had the Contractor been aware of the four key points the claim, it could have been finalised both easily and quickly. And with much less expense and effort!

If you want to develop the skills to prepare claims effectively, the Perfect Claim e-course will give you the skills to prepare successful claims. Find out more here.