| Date | 16 November 2005 |
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| Judgment | Emcor Drake & Scull Ltd v Edinburgh Royal Joint Venture and others, Court of Session, 28 October 2005 |
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| The Issue | The status of building services design drawings and responsibility for coordination. |
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| Implication |
A
contract term must be construed in the context of the contract as
a whole and accordingly engineers' design drawings described as "fully
coordinated" may still require design installation input from the
specialist subcontractor. |
printIn a recent case in the Court of Session in Edinburgh Lord Drummond Young decided that although building services drawings had been described as "fully coordinated and approved for construction", this did not necessarily mean the drawings in question were ready for installation. Some further background is required to explain this decision. The dispute arose out of a subcontract for the electrical installations for the New Royal Infirmary and Medical School in Edinburgh. Following difficulties between the main contractor and an earlier subcontractor for the electrical services, Emcor Drake and Scull had been engaged to carry out phase 2 of the works. The subcontract made it clear that Emcor was not responsible for the design of the electrical installations, but nevertheless Emcor wished to put together a realistic price for the works against the background that a rapid start on site was envisaged. Accordingly Emcor qualified its tender and subcontract with the words "Our bid has been prepared on the understanding that the vast majority of tender drawings received are fully coordinated and approved for construction". Disputes arose concerning the meaning of this qualification and these were referred to the court as a preliminary issue. Lord Drummond Young commented upon the complexity of the building services on a project of this type. The services typically included lighting and power cabling, plumbing and drainage, central heating and air conditioning, fire alarm and emergency lighting systems, medical gases and nurse call systems. The main distribution for these services ran through the corridors of the building at high level in the ceiling void. The distribution network and connections of each of those services would be indicated in the mechanical and electrical engineers' design drawings and in those drawings a degree of coordination would be involved to satisfy, for example, that there would be adequate space in the ceiling void to accommodate all the services. Lord Drummond Young characterised this as the first stage of the coordination of service drawings. This was confirmed by the drawing protocols annexed to the subcontract in which it was stated that the services engineer was to "spatially coordinate the services with the structure" in producing design drawings. A second stage of coordination of services drawings occurred after completion of the engineer's design drawings. This was the responsibility of the various specialist subcontractors engaged for the installation of those services. This involved identifying the precise routes to be taken by the ducting or piping for the different services in such a way as to avoid any clashes. In carrying out this activity, each specialist subcontractor must prepare detailed working drawings which can be used by its employees to install the service in question. These define precisely where the service is to run, including heights, and the components that are to be used including bracketry and other fixings. This work is generally carried out by CAD operators who produce multi-layered coordination drawings showing all of the services. Lord Drummond Young held that the drawings provided to Emcor with the tender package were of a status which was "approved for construction", but these were design drawings rather than detailed working drawings. Indeed, it was not in dispute that an electrical engineer who looked at the tender drawings would have realised that they were design drawings and not detailed working or installation drawings. The drawings lacked invert levels, lacked fixing points for bracketry to support the electrical containment and did not indicate how maintenance access to adjacent services was to be preserved. Moreover, in relation to the general contractual background, other terms of the contract clearly placed a considerable onus on Emcor to check the drawings provided for the purpose of the subcontract. These provisions were inconsistent with any argument that the main contractor had warranted that the drawings provided at tender stage required no further development to ensure coordination with other subcontractors. The court also had to take into account that at the time when Emcor began work on the electrical installations, it already had very extensive knowledge of the way in which the services were to be accommodated within the building, having already been engaged for installation of the heating and plumbing installations. In conclusion, Lord Drummond Young held that the expression "fully coordinated" referred to the first stage of coordination, not the second. The expression "approved for construction" simply meant that the drawings in question must have attained final release status, where no further revisions would be required except in the case of minor amendment. The qualification of the subcontract therefore meant no more than that the tender drawings relied upon by Emcor in fixing its price were of a sufficient quality to comply with the first stage of the design coordination process. Emcor retained the obligation to develop those drawings into installation drawings to fulfil the second stage of coordination. In effect, fully coordinated meant only partly coordinated; Emcor were not entitled to assume that the tender drawings would generally have reached the stage of development where installation drawings could immediately be issued to its operatives on site.
CJ-0545
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