A review of the Public Works Contracts commenced in December 2013 during the terms of office of Minister Ruairi Quinn. Following engagement between the Office of Government Procurement (Department of Public Expenditure and Reform) and industry stakeholders, in December 2014 the Government Contracts Committee for Construction, (GCCC), published its Report on the Review of the Performance of the Public Works Contract. The report proposed 4 interim measures to amend the Public Works Contracts (PWCs) “In recognition of the changed market and to encourage more realistic pricing of public works projects…” Three of the four measures are proceeding and implementation procedures have now been issued by the Office of Government Procurement (OGP).
The three changes which all Government bodies are obliged to implement are:
1. Reducing the level of risk currently being transferred by making the bill of quantities the primary reference document for tender purposes on employer-designed contracts.
2. Direct tendering of specialist works packages (e.g. Mechanical, Electrical and Lift installations) where specialist works make up a significant proportion of the overall project value or where they have a significant impact on the long term performance of the project.
3. The inclusion of informal dispute resolution methods to reduce the volume of disputes that are currently being referred to the formal procedures prescribed in the contract.
In August of this year the Department published Guidance for design teams in the form of Design Team Procedures – Practice Note 1 which is available on the Departments website.
Schools and their design teams have been informed that they will now need to assess what needs to be done to bring their project to a tender ready stage in accordance with these changes to the Public Works Contracts.
When the design team has identified what exactly needs to be updated for their particular project they have been asked to submit a fee proposal to the Department for carrying out this work.
Once this work is completed and the Design team provide confirmation of same the Department will then revert regarding progression of the project.
The Department will carefully manage this process with a view to minimising the risk of any delays.
