General Principles

A party's entitlement to claim anything, be that an interim payment, an extension of time, loss and expense, variations or damages, will either arise from the other party's breach of the contract or from a particular provision in the building contract. It is well established that when making a claim, ‘he who asserts must prove;’ therefore, the burden of proof rests with the party making a claim. Causation is the relationship between cause and effect and is an extremely important concept in the context of liability. Provided that the contractor can fulfil the four key steps of showing ‘duty, breach, causation and loss’, there are few limits to the categories of claim that an ingenious contractor may bring under the terms of the contract. The term ‘knock-on’ effect is often used to describe a secondary effect on the contractor's progress of work, which is directly caused by an initial or preceding effect on progress.