RAA In Practice | Legal speak: Fundamental legal concepts underpinning contract administration; explained for the benefit of people who were smart enough to choose Architecture and not Law | Fiona Clark

The Session
Barrister Fiona Clark’s presentation will set out all the legal ‘problem areas’ in a contract which are usually unknown to people who do not have legal qualifications and are even unknown to lawyers who do not specialise in construction.

She will discuss topics like:

1. The allocation of risk in a building contract and how the contract administrator must be aware of the various points where the client is contractually taking on risk.

2. Determining what the contract actually is - and this is more complex than most people think.

3. Lump Sum contracts vs Cost Plus- understanding how they work.

4. Time and how expensive it is under a building contract- and how to manage this.

5. Variations- what exactly are they at law?

6. Defects- understanding the law on defects so you make effective and legally correct decisions about what is defective and what is just incomplete work (or not a defect at all).

7. Notices under contracts- which notices have time bars, and which notices will cost the client a lot of money if you miss deadlines (including SOPA claims).

8. Defaulting builders and the seriousness of terminating- how not to accidentally repudiate the contract on behalf of your client.

9. The new Design and Building Practitioners Act and how that affects contract administration.

10. Document Management and what is important for a future dispute between the client and the builder.

11. Obligations on designers when they are administering a contract- how you have a duty of care and the scope of your duty- to ensure designs are reviewed and errors are removed- and how to manage this without blowing out the budget.

Fiona Clark
Fiona Clark is a barrister who specialises in construction and infrastructure. She has been at the Bar in NSW since 1999 (with a brief hiatus where she moved to San Francisco and Washington DC) and prior to this she was a solicitor at the NSW Office of Fair Trading.

She has appeared in large multi-million dollar building contract disputes for developers, builders and owners and has appeared in the High Court and the New South Wales Court of Appeal in complex and often novel disputes which all involve the interpretation of building contracts and the obligations of contractors, owners and design consultants. She has acted for Architects and Engineers in professional negligence and breach of contract proceedings and is currently developing online courses for non-lawyers to teach contract administration to people who do not have legal qualifications.

She has also taught in the University of Wollongong and University of Western Sydney Law Schools and has published articles in the Australian Law Journal and given papers on building contracts, expert evidence in building disputes, and contract administration for various institutional bodies such as the Master Builders’ Association and the Institute of Architects, as well as to solicitors CPD forums.

This one hour session offers 1 formal CPD point, performance criteria addressed are 2, 12, 13, 16, 19, 24, 32, 41, 42, 43, 46, 47, 51, 55, 56, 57, 58 and 59 from the AACA National Standard of Competency for Architects 2021.

RAA members are eligible to utilise the discount code available in the member content area for free attendance of this session.