Contract issue

[deargdiabhal]

Help!!!
Ive got myself in a tricky situation and need any advice possible.

Here goes....
I agreed a price and details with a contractor through his quantity surveyor, who I had used to price my build originally.
The contractor was never pushed on signing a contract (silly I know but I knew the man and his work had always been good). He was due to start in June but I got non stop excuses or he refused to answer his phone!
Its now been six months and all I have is walls at roof level, ok there was bad weather, a lot of site work, few mistakes on drawings etc but surely thats still a joke!
I was never chased by the contractor for money , but over Christmas I paid €30,000 as my engineer said that was the value of work done, as steel and pre cast floor also had to be pre paid for ordering...
I dont feel the contractor is trying to scam me money wise, but , the lack of work done, none signing of full detailed contract,none answering of phone, blatant lies etc are my issues.
I have sent a letter through my engineer in October and he sharpened up for a few weeks but back to square one now!

Has anyone else had this same problem?
If so what are my options?
Also legally where do I stand in getting rid of the contractor, considering no contract has been signed etc???

Any advice will be appreciated.....

 

[onq]

deargdiabhal,

You jumped from him being supposed ot start in June to having walls to roof level currently.
Somewhere in there he must have started on site, and its impossible to say whether his performance is good, bad or indifferent without knowing the size of house, house type, degree of access, weather conditions, etc.

I am at a loss to understand how you could be up to wall plate but still pre-paying for steel and precast floors needed to be pre-paid.
Surely if you're at roof level the steels and precast floors are installed by now?

In relation to the alleged perceived general lack of attention to your desires to get on with it, you should have both a signed contract AND an agreed programme of building.
These should have been dealt with prior to commencement by your engineer in order for you to be able to seek liquidated and ascertained damages for any delays and to allow you to give an indication of likely draw-down points to your engineer.

You HAVE agreed liquidated and ascertained damages, haven't you?
These should be based on a genuine pre-estimate of loss likely to be accruing to the employer [you] and not a penalty.

Also I'd be a little wary of having only an engineer assessing costs on your behalf.
Has he signed recommendations for payment certificates for presentation to your bank?
Has your engineer inspected and signed off on the drainage and foundation for the house?

I suggest that you should bring on board a QS/project manager to tidy up the contract, advise on costs and ensure the work gets done.
I suggest that you appoint an architect to ensure the weathering, insulation and sealing details are all done in a compliant manner.
The reason I suggest both boys is that archtiects fees are quite affordable now and it will tend to put the builder on high alert.

I have recently mentioned a horror story I read about on boards.ie where a contractor was getting known for coming in way low on tenders, geting the first big payment [including some prepaid stuff I presume, but I'm nto ceratain] and then disappearing.

You may need to find out where the main contractor's office is located and where he lives and if it becomes necessary raise your game to send him solicitor's letters.

ONQ.

[broken link removed]

All advice on AAM is remote from the situation and cannot be relied upon as a defence or support - in and of itself - should legal action be taken.
Competent legal and building professionals should be asked to advise in Real Life with rights to inspect and issue reports on the matters at hand.

 

[kkelliher]

In theory and from alegal standpoint if it were to get very messy and you had to go down the legal route the courts (from past legal cases and precedants) generally assume the conditions of contract of the standard building contract for these works as been operatable as performance by the builder (ie the works having been commenced onsite) and payments by the client (as outlined) would generally be enough to confirm tat a contract is in place. As a result you could be in a position to bind the contractor by the conditions of the standard form of contract for this work which would be the RIAI standard form as agreed with the CIF and SCS but you would need to go legal to get it inforced.

As outlined by previous poster I would try and get someone to assist (a QS of course!!!) you from the contract perspective but I would also refuse any further payments until a programme and contract have been produced for the project.