UKC

,,, no, not by a bee, rather one of the biggest construction companies in Australia:

Awarded a recent tender and during the 8 week negotiating period I was repeatedly asked to Value Manage a bit more [meaning "you're still over our budget"].

So - and all put in writing - I advised I could 'discount this for you providing that' and 'your steel fixers can tack the reo bars on up on the formwork deck', both of which were accepted so no drama [I thought].

There was also a scope item by 'the access consultant' that was simply un-buildable which I picked up on [but it appears the other tenderers hadn't] 'cept in the Design & Construct contracting world one has to initial every page of the Scope of Works and price to the Conforming Tender [even if wrong] then table an improved scheme - which is precisely what I did - with my 'buildable' alternative - and revised price.

The 'access consultant' and site engineers all agreed [unequivocally] that I'd discovered, and solved a major discrepancy so I won the job. Brill, boss happy, me too.

Enter the money men and lady after hands had been shaken .... "just finalizing your contract but what are these scope changes Andy"? [explanation]. "no, we're signing you up on the spec" ["it doesn't work, we can't sign that"].

Crisis meeting convened for next morning with the firm's 'big' boss (and bearing in mind we're already $80,000.00 committed in fabrication), "You signed the spec" ,,,, sighs, shaking of head ,,,, "yep, and improved it coz it was rubbish and re-priced accordingly" [a mere $9,000] "well yr not getting a penny more" ,,, but, but, but the improved product isn't stocked in Australia so I'm seek prices [including air freight] from China, America and Europe..... No $9k. End of story!

Except it isn't ....

I'll post part 2 if anyone's interested.

Cheers,

Andy.

I'm quite amazed that you can be involved in all that when just the other day you said you can barely get out of bed in the morning.

Have you considered that you might be in the wrong job?

I am interested

Your story isn't entirely clear but it sounds like a price for a job had been agreed and then you asked for more and the customer is insisting your company stick to the original price?

That's life I'm afraid.

I’d like to hear part 2.

what contract are you using, and how does it deal with "impossible requirements"?

are (were) you able to just go back to the original scope (yes, of course we'll build exactly what you're asking for), then ask for a clarification and change instruction to resolve the impossible bit? (what do we do here; it's your scope, instruct us how to deal with it?).....

or - if there is a major discrepancy as you say, is your contract not Contra Proferentem?

I'm interested too.  My golden rule with any project is document everything and ensure you get a documented response. The clients tend to be really keen on dropping the price and altering the specification and expecting you to roll with it. 

I ran a business for years - was brilliant a lot of the time - and too ill to 'get out of bed' the others. There's often a simple explanation. Maybe buy his book if you want to know.

"The 'access consultant' and site engineers all agreed [unequivocally] that I'd discovered, and solved a major discrepancy so I won the job. Brill, boss happy, me too."

Andy, have you got this in writing, or (long shot) can you get supporting evidence from the people this was agreed with? And yeah, another vote for part ii.

Atb David

Sounds more like he clearly stated the spec wasn't correct, then submitted a quote identifying the issue and costed to include the additional work.

This was then agreed by the client, who is now trying to revert to the original price, but still get the additional work done.

Not an expert in contracts, but why not carry out the original scope to the letter, then when it all comes to a halt it's the clients problem?

I feel your pain. I was, many moons ago, hired to develop some software by a certain pretty big application server vendor (since subsumed by an extremely big database vendor). What they wanted was a Java Siebel adapter, for a fixed price. Spent about two months developing it, delivered it, they seemed happy with it. Their finance lot then refused to settle the invoice for technical reasons I can't be bothered to go into. Never did get the money from them, and to add insult to injury the adapter was for several years bundled with their business package. Bah!

Depends on how big the relative companies are.  Big company refuses to pay - and happy to string it out for ages.  Small company goes to the wall as they are already committed to paying their suppliers... or in worst case cant pay their suppliers.

Been there sadly.

I know that is some industries, one of the things they look at in a supplier is can they bust them.  You would be surprised how many small businesses are done by this.

In reply to Andy Gamisou,  I knew of a guy, who deliberately chose sole traders and small businesses to do work for him, then always seem to find '3' reasons why the work wasn't satisfactory and refuse to pay them.  He was always charming to start with then became an angry bully. For many they just cut their losses as it was so hard to fight him.  Needless to say I only worked for him once and learned a valuable lesson early in my business!

Before starting up on my own I was employed by a company that worked on this basis, I used to warm our subbies, "make sure you get stage payments", " Oh1 it'll be fine he's promised.....", this or that!! Often very late or never got paid.

One company came in on the weekend of a job for a major cat producer and removed a number of motors on a job that was due to go live the next week. Needless to say they got paid, Monday morning. When he started robbing our pensions, was my indications to leave, though many good employees still stayed on with him.

Closed down that company, started another up the same week with a similar name and carried on. Rinse and repeat over a number of years, he's still doing the same AFAIK

Thanks Ridge / everyone, this is precisely the case. However, I can't sign up to provide something that's literally unbuildable.

Were I to then I'd be a fool and [contractually] it'd be my problem to fix.

I'll expand in Part 2 now.

Cheers all, appreciated.

Andy.