The education and training of engineers tends to focus on the technical. Contract law comes later and, even then, will be taught in terms of clause and interpretation. This will not necessarily prepare an engineer for the plethora of surprisingly imaginative approaches and interpretations to claims sometimes used by a skilled contractor. The only way to bring these into focus is to stand back, to try and understand the background pattern often employed in order to prepare an “enabling environment” for claims. It can be akin to gamesmanship and, as far as the present writer is aware, is not taught formally and yet it is one of the most perennial aspects of contract administration.

This brief article is one engineer’s attempt to draw a pattern out of what might often seem random numbers of creative, and often bizarre, issues. It is based on over 30 years of international experience, mainly on large dam and hydro schemes. The technique used was to reduce what might seem to have been random and unconnected matters back to common themes.

There is a well known quotation from the engineer James Mansergh when writing to Birmingham Corporation about the construction of the Elan Valley Waterworks scheme and recommending the use of direct labour rather than a contractor: