‘As the deluge of smash and grab adjudications continues to percolate through the construction industry, shrewd contractors are advancing more and more creative legal submissions as a way of reviving interim payment applications that have somewhere gone awry. Twice in the past year, the TCC has been addressed on the issue of whether a contractor can rely on an estoppel to resuscitate an interim application; and in one of those cases, that estoppel was created solely out of the actions of the contract administrator. Although the TCC has yet to fully articulate all of those situations in which the actions of the engineer or contract administrator are capable of giving rise to an estoppel, construction professionals would be wise to exercise a degree of caution and be wary of inadvertently bestowing such rights upon the contractor, much to the detriment of the employer.’
Hardwicke Chambers, 21st July 2016
Source: www.hardwicke.co.uk
