Extension of Time for Weather, Labour and Nominated Lifts
A developer has engaged a contractor under the HKIA Standard Form of Building Contract (With Quantities, 2005 Edition) to build a 28-storey residential tower in Tseung Kwan O. The contract sum is HK$680 million; completion is due on 30 June 2026; liquidated damages are HK$2.5 million per week, capped at 10% of the contract sum. The architect is the contract administrator. In September 2025 a black rainstorm warning and two No. 8 typhoon signals caused 10 days of site closure. The contractor also says it lost 20 days because labour was poached by a nearby public housing project. The contractor has given notice and claims 30 days' extension of time (EOT). During the same period, the employer's nominated lift supplier delivered the lift cars three weeks late. The contractor's programme shows the lift installation is on the critical path. The employer refuses any EOT and threatens to deduct liquidated damages.
1. Assess the contractor's entitlement to EOT for the 10 days of bad weather. What records and tests should the architect apply?
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The architect should not grant EOT automatically. The contract's EOT machinery usually makes exceptionally adverse weather a relevant event, but the contractor must show four things: notice within the contractual period; that the weather was exceptional when compared with meteorological records for the site, not merely that a black rainstorm warning was issued; that the weather actually prevented work on the critical path; and that the contractor mitigated the effects. A No. 8 signal or black rainstorm warning may close the site for safety, but if the affected activities had float, there is no delay to completion. The architect should require daily site records, rainfall and typhoon data, the baseline and updated programmes, and a time impact analysis. If only 6 of the 10 days affected critical activities, the EOT should be 6 days, not 10. Any period before the weather event when the contractor was already in culpable delay may also reduce the effective extension.
2. How should the architect deal with the 20-day labour shortage claim?
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The architect should reject the labour shortage claim unless the contract contains a specific ground or the employer caused the shortage. Labour supply and productivity are generally the contractor's risk under a lump-sum contract. Poaching by a nearby public housing project is a market event, not an employer risk, and is unlikely to be listed as a relevant event. The architect should check whether the employer instructed a different sequence, delayed access, or required additional work that caused the shortage. Absent that, no EOT is due. The contractor's remedy is to re-sequence, increase resources, or bear the consequences. Granting EOT for labour shortage would rewrite the risk allocation and could expose the architect to a claim from the employer.
3. What is the effect of the late lift delivery, given that it overlaps the weather delay? Can the contractor recover both time and money?
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The late lift delivery is an employer-risk event because the lift supplier was nominated by the employer. If the lift installation was on the critical path and the three-week delay actually delayed completion, the contractor is entitled to EOT for that period. But the contractor cannot recover prolongation costs twice for the same days. Where the weather delay and the lift delay overlap, the architect should carry out a concurrent delay analysis: the contractor may get EOT for the employer-risk event, but loss and expense should be limited to the period when the employer event was the effective cause of delay. If the contractor's own labour shortage also caused delay in the same period, the employer may argue that the contractor would have been late anyway. The architect should separate time entitlement from money and levy liquidated damages only for unextended culpable delay.