Contractual Obligation

A contract is a deal or an agreement made between two persons or groups for a given time period. It is an agreement between or among two or more parties for provision of supplies or services against monetary value which is valid in law. Here it is discussed about role of a contractor, contractual obligation, responsibilities of a contractor, investigation of accident and analysis of accident.

Possible Contractual Obligations

• When a contract is signed among parties, there should not be any competition among themselves but they should be associated performing different functions to achieve the common goal.
• They may arise in conflict due to different in opinion, since in the final analysis each party has to protect its interest and financial gains.
• Development leads to creation of claims and then to seeking of settlements either by direct discussion of work or work action depending upon the degree of disagreement of claim.
• Interpretation, Contract clauses, difference of opinion regarding their applications, effect of climate conditions, riots and stress can create contractual problem.

Interpretation Clauses

1. Change in contract work

The client ,may effect some changes in the contract work resulting in the increase or decrease of a contract cost. During execution it is important for the contractor to first notify the client in time as his interest to file the resulting claim and then prepare and submit his case in time giving all supporting datas.

2. Substraction of work

According to this clause the client deserve the right to suspend any part of the contractor work but he has to be paid the necessary compensation. This is limited only to the contractor’s stand by cost and determination which may not be easy. Particularly, if verification of each estimate is subjected to clients audit. For example, suppose the work is suspended by the client due to poor performance of the contractor which may be the result of client’s error in specifying the compensations payable to the contractor can increase considerably.

3. Variation of quantities

In an item rate contract, the client may want price adjustment owing to variation between actual and initial estimated quantities due to various reasons. Generally, if there is a variation in quantities by 10-15 %, the contract document may not allow any compensatory increase in unit price of the work items.

4. Damage due to natural disaster

Natural disasters cover unusual flood, rain, heat, cold, earthquake, fire, etc. This together with occurrence of riots, civil communalization and all other such happenings are outside the control of the contractor. The contractor document usually specifies as to which of these risk the contractor should cover against financial loss through an insurance policy in his own interest.

5. Pre-inspection and acceptance

Sometime the contractor may have to undercover the work already completed for inspection by authorized agent of the client inspector who may claim that the work done were defective. If the work is discovered to be acceptable, than the contractor should probably claim for all his works.

6. Termination of work for convenience of client

Sometimes, the client may want to terminate the contract out of his own interest, then settlement has to be made with the contractor on cost basis, daily compensating them for his project on the component of work termination.

7. Escalation of price due to inflation

Most of the project may have to be executed in an inflation prone area as the labor ways and material price are expected to be suffer an upward revision incident to inflation. To account of this escalation of price, a balanced contract document should include the necessary payment based on any standard that are used these days.

8. Acceleration of work progress

Construction is a very complicated work involving a long term planning and scheduling of operations, optimization of manpower and machine, balancing of resources, loads and funds. Inspite of this if a client forces a contractor to accurate the construction process for an earlier completion of work he may have to pay necessary compensation for the construction.

Role of a Contractor

The main possible duties of a contractor at a time of construction of civil engineering works are as follows:

• To take the responsibilities of worker in their work regarding materials, wages, safety of the workers in any company.
• To guarantee the culmination of work on schedule.
• The owner depends on the contractor for their work.
• The contractor should look after the quality and quantity of work.

Key Responsibilities of a Contractor

The main key responsibilities or duties of a contractor at a time of construction of civil engineering works are:

• Framing and implementing health and safety plan.
• Coordination of work and cooperation with sub-contractors to eliminate unsafe practices.
• Providing information on project risk.
• Approving sub-contractors a plan of execution.
• Ensuring that a sub-contractor complies with the safety practices that should be favorable in the site and to also stand by the rules and regulations.
• Monitoring a sub-contractor performance on health and safety issues on continuous basis.
• Permitting entry of only authorized persons for execution of work.
• Updating files on health and safety.

Investigation and Analysis of Accident

The accident prevention program involves quick, positive and determine effort to identify the unsafe act and unsafe condition and to adopt the correct measures. Inspite of this effort accident occurs. Therefore investigation of accident has become one of the important function in accident, prevention program. The objective of the investigation is to determine the basic cost of accident in order to take proper action against accident so that there should be safety programs.

Investigation of accident should be taken care of as follows:

• The investigation should be carried out by the supervisor who has well knowledge with the situations.
• In order to obtain the true cost of the accident, the investigation should be carried out without any delay. Because we can not detect the true cost of the accident due to the possibility of change in situations.
• The investigation should be honest and should have the aim of exploring the fact and not to blame or fix up the responsibility on somebody.

The supervisor who is assigned the task of the investigation of accident will prepare the report of the investigation and recommendation in appropriate form and submit it to the concerned higher authority. The accident reports may vary with specific cases as follows:

• The fact or identification.
• The narrative description of the accident.
• The major cost of accident may be due to machine or other mechanical, physical hazard, unsafe act of a person, etc.
• Fact or prevention for what was done and what should be done to prevent the occurrence of other similar accident.

Read More: Safety Measures to Prevent Construction Accidents

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