Contract Administration: Variations, Claims and Extensions of Time

About this course.

Contract administration is the disciplined, day-to-day management of a construction contract while the works are carried out: giving and responding to instructions, assessing variations, extensions of time and payment claims, keeping records, and enforcing the contract's rights and obligations correctly and on time. It is different from forming the contract, which is complete once the parties are bound. Under a typical Australian construction contract the key roles are the principal (the owner or client who commissions and pays for the works), the contractor (the builder who carries them out), and a superintendent, architect or contract administrator who administers the contract between them. Subcontractors sit beneath the head contract on their own subcontracts.

The distinction between forming a contract and administering one matters, because they call for different skills and happen at different times. Course 63 deals with how a contract comes into being — offer, acceptance, consideration and the intention to be bound — and with the terms the parties negotiate. This course begins where that leaves off: the contract is signed, the price and program are set, and the task now is to run the contract faithfully through construction. Good administration turns the words of the contract into disciplined practice, so that entitlements are claimed and preserved, obligations are met, risk is allocated as the parties intended, and problems are caught and resolved early rather than left to become disputes.