A Note on the Qatar Situation
Qatar has been in the news a lot recently, particularly with regard to the 2022 World Cup, but the current situation in the country also raises concerns regarding the huge amount of construction work being undertaken and, from what I hear through the grapevine, the way contractors are being dealt with by employers and consultants.
In a busy market with deadlines to meet and limited resources, projects have been initiated with ill-advised procurement strategies. These have resulted in designs not being well advanced and contracts being poorly drafted. In such a situation, it is inevitable that a contractor will encounter many scenarios requiring claims to be submitted if they are to obtain their contractual rights and maintain their bottom line. The employer’s and consultants’ response is fairly typical in such situations: they either ignore the claims or reject them. This, of course, leads to a situation where the parties are soon at odds, and disputes quickly arise to the detriment of the project. To add fuel to the fire, there seems to have been little effort to introduce alternative dispute resolution into the contracts, so such disputes may only be settled through costly and time-consuming arbitration.
So, what can those of us who deal with construction claims do to help alleviate a situation where claims arise?
The answer, in my opinion, is that we can do quite a lot.
If we are working on the employer’s side, we should be able to identify situations that may result in a claim being submitted by the contractor and advise our teams on steps to mitigate the situation or to make provisions within the budget for such contingencies.
If we are contractors, we should consider each potential claim—its strength, its value, the contractual entitlement, and its chances of success. Having done this, a decision should be made on whether to pursue the matter or not. Serious consideration should be given to avoiding the tactic of submitting spurious claims, or claims with doubtful entitlement, in the hope that they will pass scrutiny. Mostly, they do not.
When a justifiable claim situation arises, the claim must be prepared and submitted in a professional manner, so that it can be properly understood and addresses all the essential elements to prove that it is justified. If a claim fails to do this, you are inviting either total rejection, or at best, the matter will take additional time and effort to reach resolution.
When a claim is received, those responsible for assessing it should not ignore it—it will not go away and needs to be addressed within a reasonable time frame. The response document, whether rejecting the claim, approving it in full, or awarding a partial amount, should be well-organized, well-argued, and should address all the essential elements of a good claim response, even if the claim itself does not. A good response or determination will convince the contractor and the employer that the award is just, and should convince either party that, if they elevate it to a dispute, they will likely lose when the dispute is examined.
Finally, a claims practitioner’s job, on either side of the fence, is to attempt to resolve claims and not to prolong matters or allow them to escalate into disputes. We need to be professional at all times and ensure that we do our very best in everything we do to achieve these goals.
