News in brief: January 2014

The Scottish government wants public bodies to ban contractors and other suppliers from public sector contracts unless they can prove that they no longer use blacklists.

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News in Brief: December 2013

The government is launching a £200m Sharia law compliant bond to attract investment for UK infrastructure projects. It is understood to be the first Islamic bond issued outside an Islamic country. The Sharia compliant finance industry is estimated to be worth over £600,000m globally.

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Crisis of confidence

The current pace of scale of outsourcing of public sector work outstrips the ability of civil servants to design and manage these complex contracts effectively, says the Institute for Government (IfG).

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Risk guidance from Olympics

The Treasury has published a supplement to its Green Book on how public sector bodies should appraise policies, programmes or projects before committing funds, providing guidance on assessing infrastructure spending, more detail on how project risks should be estimated and on how contingency funds should be managed.

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PBAs for Scottish projects

Project bank accounts (PBAs) are to be trialled on a range of public sector projects in the Scottish transport, health and local government sectors, the Scottish government has confirmed.

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Beware new words in old contracts

In the first part of a commentary on standard forms our contracts monitor Michael Phipps, Principal of Thurston Consultants, warns against some common misperceptions of what constitutes a contract. Make sure your copy is current, is his first warning.

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Legal terms explained: Force majeure clauses

Force majeure clauses appear in standard form construction contracts. Th e JCT form, for example, uses this term as a relevant event but it is not defi ned. FIDIC provides a non-exhaustive list of examples and NEC uses the term prevention for what is eff ectively force majeure.

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News in Brief: November 2013

Clients involved in a London domestic property conversion during which a worker died in a trench collapse have been sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court.

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Safety double whammy

Over half of site personnel involved in visits by Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspectors have never heard of the Fee for Intervention (FFI) scheme that can lead to significant financial charges if safety breaches are found, according to a client survey by DAC Beachcroft.

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Adjudication award stayed

The Technology and Construction Court has given contractor John Graham Construction a stay of execution over an adjudication award to cladding sub-contractor Pioneer Cladding because the subcontractor is in financial difficulties.

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