Valuing extended preliminaries

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Legal and contractual solutions · Loss and expense

Should extended preliminaries be valued using bill rates or the contractor's actual additional cost?

Contract definitions, causal expenditure and reasonable proof

The starting point is the contractual valuation rule. Where entitlement concerns direct loss, expense or cost incurred, recovery should ordinarily reflect reasonable additional expenditure caused by the compensable event, not automatic application of tendered preliminaries rates.

Quick answer

Use the contract's valuation basis and prove the reasonable additional cost actually caused

A priced preliminary may assist as evidence, an agreed rate or a cross-check, but it may include assumptions, profit, risk or costs that did not continue. Identify the affected period and each resource retained or added because of the employer-risk event. Exclude costs incurred in any event, items serving unaffected work and sums recovered elsewhere. Finance, overhead and profit depend on the contract's definitions and cannot be imported automatically.

IssuePosition
Express bill-rate valuationApply if the contract requires it
Direct loss or actual cost wordingProve reasonable causal expenditure
Tendered preliminaryEvidence or cross-check, not automatic entitlement
Unaffected resourceNot recoverable merely because time extended
Finance, overhead and profitApply the specific contractual definition

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