Due to COVID-19 the Government of the Country has introduced new legislation that resulted in the closure of its borders to travel. This has resulted in a team of essential workers, recruited by the Contractor from abroad, not being able to travel to Site to commence with their work. The Contractor was not able to find adequately skilled workers to carry out the work in question locally and is dependent upon the skill and experience of the workers that it has recruited from abroad. For these reasons, the Contractor is not able to commence with certain critical activities, as per the construction program and thus fear that it will not be able to complete the works within the Time for Completion.

Question 2(a) Draft, on behalf of the Contractor, all the notices which the Contractor would be obliged to give if the Parties contracted on the basis of the 1999 Edition of the Red Book, in order to submit a claim for a revision of the Time for Completion, given the scenario above. Make reference to the relevant clauses in the required notices.

Question2 (b) Assume that the Parties have entered into a 2017 edition instead of the 1999 edition of the Yellow Book. Assume, furthermore, that the Contractor received no notification, at the time, of the fact that an essential team of workers were not be able to travel to site from abroad due to the closure of the airport at the point of departure for these workers. The project ends up being two months behind schedule due to absence of these essential workers from the Site. At no point during this time did the Contractor advise the Empoyer or the Engineer about the fact that it is unable to progress with the execution of the work in accordance with the progamme. Taking into consideration the contractual timelines and given the scenario as described above, identify the relevant clauses, if any, that the Contractor would be able to rely upon in order to claim an extension of time and/or recovery of the prolongation costs that it has incurred as a result. Also indicate whether, in your opinion, the Contractor would be able to succeed in recovering both time and costs or whether only one of those claims is likely to succeed. Would the failure, on the part of the Contractor to advise the Engineer that its progam is slipping have any impact on the assessment of the claim that the Contractor proceeded to submit?