Contract Administration in City of London

For a City of London instruction, establish the building-contract decisions alongside the site’s environmental and access approvals. The Corporation’s construction guidance, the building’s designation and the employer’s operational needs can affect the information a contractor prices. A CA appointment should explain how those requirements enter the instruction, valuation and programme records.

HCS cannot act as independent contract administrator where HCS is the contractor. Confirm the appointment and executed form; NEC roles differ.

Scope and fees

Put the protective-works scheme into the tender information

The City Corporation’s construction guidance says planning conditions often require a scheme of protective works addressing noise, vibration and dust, with approval before the restricted work begins. The level of detail depends on likely impact. For your project, identify the condition and the approved scheme, then give tenderers the same documents. Ask who owns each submission and who records any revised agreement. A contractor’s programme should distinguish a planned approval date from an approval actually obtained. Contract administration can track that dependency; it cannot replace the Corporation’s decision or convert a pending submission into permission to proceed.

Record the occupiers affected by each work phase

City guidance recognises that residents, businesses and other sensitive premises may be affected differently, and that working arrangements need to respond to the particular site. Prepare an occupier-interface schedule for the actual frontage and adjoining premises. It can record access to retain, activities needing advance communication and the contact responsible for responding to a complaint. Where a proposed sequence changes, compare it with the agreed environmental arrangements before assessing the contractual consequences. Avoid assuming that an evening delivery is acceptable simply because an office has closed, or that one neighbour’s agreement settles the position for the whole building.

Use the correct evidence for listed modern fabric

The Corporation describes the Barbican’s residential blocks on a raised podium and highlights distinctive concrete detailing; it also publishes listed building management guidelines. This is a specific City setting, not a description of every Square Mile property. If the instructed address forms part of that estate, identify the applicable listing, management guidance and permissions before setting the repair specification. Ask the designer to mark retained finishes and the locations where samples or trials are needed. For another City building, obtain its own designation and material evidence rather than importing a Barbican repair assumption into the contract.

Define investigations before adjusting a provisional allowance

Suppose a proposed alteration exposes an interface that could not be inspected before tender. The brief should locate the opening, describe temporary protection and identify who will assess the finding before work continues. That is a project-planning example, not evidence of a defect at a City address. Keep the contractor’s photographs and measurements with the designer’s response and the administrator’s instruction. When replacing an allowance with an assessed value, distinguish the original included work from the instructed change. An unexplained provisional sum should not conceal who must resolve a design question or authorise additional investigation.

Keep access agreements and adjoining-owner procedures distinct

For a City refurbishment, assemble the loading proposal, any highway permissions, building-management access arrangements and the planned construction sequence in one readiness record. Check the responsible highway authority and the actual permission rather than treating the City postcode as a permit. Separately, the government’s party wall guidance identifies work such as cutting into a party wall and certain nearby excavations that can require notification. Have the relevant adviser compare those categories with the drawings. Track an unresolved neighbour matter against the affected activity, without representing a CA instruction or payment certificate as agreement of private rights.

JCT tender preparation: City Of London

For a Smithfield-area package, the tender schedule should distinguish conservation of an existing feature from manufacture of a new element in a historic style. The Cloth Fair examples make that distinction particularly useful when specifying projecting windows; the Middle Street example prompts a separate record for former loading openings. Neither feature identifies the suitable JCT form by itself. Ask the adviser to match the proposed design allocation, pricing documents and administration requirements to the actual scope. Obtain comparable allowances for temporary enclosure, protected access and occupied premises, and resolve any contractor qualification that shifts a stated repair into an unspecified replacement before accepting the tender. For a converted City building, show the current floor openings and service routes beside the external repair schedule. Ask the tenderer to identify attendance at those interfaces separately, so a facade allowance does not silently exclude the connection to occupied accommodation behind it.

The City’s Smithfield conservation-area document records late twentieth-century red-brick houses at 24–37 Cloth Fair with projecting windows recalling the seventeenth-century examples at 41–42. On Middle Street it identifies a former warehouse at number 23 through its surviving crane and blocked loading opening. These named examples show why appearance and historic reference should be distinguished from a building’s actual construction history.

Keep evidence about the outer wall separate from evidence about internal subdivision. A façade restoration specification may say little about later floor construction or services. List the documents that are absent and the common spaces that can be accessed, so the proposed visual inspection has a clear boundary.

Check current requirements for the particular property and proposed work.

• City of London: construction, demolition and street works
• City of London: Barbican Estate history and listed fabric
• City of London: Barbican listed building management guidelines
• GOV.UK: work requiring party wall notification
• City of London: Smithfield Conservation Area Character Summary and Management Strategy

• Major works
• Tendering
• Clerk of Works
• Employer's Agent
• Insurance reinstatement

• City of London area guide

Professional profiles · RICS regulation