Search for the truth, as chaotic as it may be, it is better than a convenient fiction. Don’t fall prey to dodgy formulae or inappropriate methodologies just because it leads to an awardable or agreeable answer. Don’t accept that things need to remain the same as they always have been, investigate, innovate, be ingenious. Young experts, you can be non-conforming. However, using my best judgement the answer should be in this range.” “Actually, I don’t know what happened, I probably never will. Present them with a genuine opinion even if that opinion is: Let the judges and tribunals do their job. Go to the court or the tribunal with some uncertainty, they will understand, they live in the real world. Let the evidence take you where it leads. The genuine chaos on a troubled project may be ignored in an effort to find an awardable answer, to rein in the uncontrollable universe.Įxperts are so called because they have the life experience and clear thought processes that allow free thinking. Justice and fairness may be sacrificed for the sake of conformity and control. Independence of thought is especially necessary in those areas where formulae, protocols and theoretical methodologies rule. What we must guard against is teaching others, new to the industry or with limited experience of real contracting problems, that these controls are the only answer. Conformity is not necessarily an answer, but it gives the illusion of control. Formulae and Protocols are not perfect, but they give an awardable answer. It is unlikely to be a true reflection of actuality, just as formulae do not reflect reality. In our hearts and minds we know it is a compromise. The danger with this procedure is that it can appear to be something more than it is. So, where is the wrinkle? Well, too often we are comparing two theoretical, but conforming, sets of data. We then compare the two results and order is restored and virtual bunting is hung on the streets as we parade by in our victory over chaos. We then look backwards and say that according to a set measure, perhaps referring to a protocol, the contractor should have used a similar methodology to plan the works it was his duty to do so. First, we choose a conforming methodology for analysis, perhaps the ‘As Built Programme Methodology’, and using it we find a controlled answer to the question of: When should the project have finished? It is inevitable that chaos will reign if control is not exercised, we say, and so we set about restoring order. In complex delay disputes we look at the data, examine the records, obtain witness testimony and analyse the time records and what happens? A confusing picture is painted. We had control and if we all conformed, all would be well. The fact that the results were often daft was ignored. So, we invented formulae and gained control over the chaos reigning in the universe. In the 1960’s construction claims started to include Head Office costs but evidential support for these costs was scant and always would be. When we come across a problem that does not have an easy resolution we tend to ‘work around’ the problem. So, how does this work in our industry, how does it relate to disputes? “We are born to die and the knowledge of that would overwhelm us if our psyche did not fill our minds with day to day problems and issues for us to resolve!” In that lesson I heard the professor explain what I had always known intuitively: The adults who supervised my growing up had faced at least one world war, a cold war, rationing and uncertainty, what they craved more than anything was certainty, and control over small things seemed to help.Īt college while studying for my Construction HNC, I was excused maths and English as I already had qualifications in both, so I filled my time with a course on Psychology. The most common adult response was “It has always been done this way.” But I read history, I knew it hadn’t always been done this way, it was a fashion. I was consistently told at home, school and church that I was not conforming whereas I believed I was independently testing the system, wondering why things had to be done a certain way when no-one could explain why. “The book makes the case for thinking independently when conformity is the norm.” The thing that drew me to the book originally as a teenager was a critic who said this The adult Catherine Hand has now produced the film for Disney. In 1964 ten-year-old Catherine Hand wrote a letter to Walt Disney asking him to make the book into a film but did not send the letter. It is, however, a 1962 novel by Madelaine L’Engle that took 56 years to make it to the big screen. If someone had said to me that the book ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ was a new book on construction delay I would simply have commended the author for coming up with a great title.
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