4 Key Points to Ensure You Do Not Present a Bad Claim
At Claims Class, we teach the following four key points in claim and response writing:
- Make the reader's job as easy and as pleasant as possible.
- Ensure that the submission is a stand-alone document.
- Assume that the reviewer has no prior knowledge of the project or circumstances.
- Irrelevant information should not be included in the document.
I recently dealt with a claim that did not follow these principles. In this article, I am going to share the results with you to emphasize the importance of adhering to these guidelines.
I was appointed by the Employer to review the Contractor’s claim and produce a recommendation for the Engineer to issue. The claim was for an extension of time due to missing design information, which prevented the Contractor from ordering electrical equipment, causing delays to the project. I should mention that, from the outset, the claim was a fair one, and the Contractor was entitled to an extension of time under these circumstances as per the contract.
However, the point I am trying to make is that the Contractor did not make the review process easy for either me or, ultimately, themselves.
During my first read-through of the claim narrative, I immediately noticed that the Contractor had repeated the same information multiple times throughout the claim, usually to no particular purpose. Having to read the same thing several times is not only frustrating but does not make the review process pleasant.
The narrative was structured randomly and did not follow any logical order. For example, the demonstration of entitlement was mixed in with a discussion of the cause of the delay, making the narrative confusing for a reader. A well-structured narrative should tell a story that guides the reader on a clear journey, ultimately leading to a logical conclusion.
The narrative also contained numerous abbreviations without any explanation. Perhaps 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 situation was annoying and inconvenient and serves as a perfect example of why it’s essential to assume the reviewer has no prior knowledge of the project or its circumstances.
The claim did not include substantiation for many statements made within the narrative. For instance, the Contractor stated that they had submitted notices within the time frames stipulated in the Contract, yet the claim did not include documentary evidence to support this statement. Consequently, the claim did not comprise a stand-alone document. I was therefore obliged to check the records to verify this assertion, which was an additional inconvenience. In the end, I found that the Contractor had not, in fact, submitted the notices within the required time frames as they had claimed.
This led me to the conclusion that the Contractor might be attempting to hide the truth, which made me scrutinize everything else in the claim very critically.
You may consider my comments somewhat petty, but let me continue. Based on the information submitted within the claim, plus the additional information that I was obliged to find myself, I recommended an extension of time that was significantly less than what the Contractor had claimed. When the claim assessment was issued to the Contractor, they immediately responded to say that I had not taken several factors into account. I asked the Contractor to show me where these factors were included in their claim.
They weren’t.
The Contractor subsequently submitted additional particulars, and I revised the assessment. But this did not end the matter, as the Contractor then remembered other information that had not been included. The claim assessment went through three revisions before the matter was finally concluded. This process wasted both my time and the Contractor’s, and it prevented the issue from being resolved for several months.
Had the Contractor been aware of the four key points, the claim could have been resolved quickly and efficiently, with much less effort and expense.
If you want to develop the skills to prepare claims effectively, the Perfect Claim e-course will equip you with the tools to prepare successful claims. Find out more here.
