Cases - Pride Valley Foods Ltd v Hall & Partners (Contract Management) Ltd (No. 1)
Record details
- Name
- Pride Valley Foods Ltd v Hall & Partners (Contract Management) Ltd (No. 1)
- Date
- [2000]
- Citation
- EWHC Technology 106
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Contract administration
- Summary
-
This case concerned a devastating fire at a bakery in County Durham. In the course of his judgment, HHJ Toulmin QC had to consider the relevance and importance of the expert evidence before him concerning project management, and concluded:
'In this case I made observations, both in the course of the interlocutory procedure and at trial, as to the value of expert evidence relating to project management. I expressed the view that what Halls had agreed to do depended on the terms of the contracts with Pride Valley and in particular on the scope of their duties as set out in App 1 to their terms of engagement ...
There is an initial difficulty in accepting expert opinion evidence in relation to the duties of project managers. There is no chartered or professional institution of project managers nor a recognisable profession of project managers. In so far as it may be appropriate to accept expert evidence, the nature of the evidence that might be acceptable will depend on what the project manager has agreed to do. In some cases the project manager will be the architect who will design the project and then, acting as project manager, supervise the contractor and the sub-contractors in carrying out the work. At the other end of the scale the project manager will supervise the work of the contractor and sub-contractors and ensure that the work is carried out in conformity with the design drawings. In these circumstances the project manager will have no design function even to the extent of providing an outline specification. This bears no relation to the function of the architect acting to project manage his project.'