Cases - Secretary of State for Transport v Birse-Farr Joint Venture

Record details

Name

Secretary of State for Transport v Birse-Farr Joint Venture

Date

[1993]

Citation

62 BLR 36

Keywords

Construction contracts – certification - interim certificate – failure to certify amounts due – margin of error – purpose of interim certification

Summary

In this case it was alleged that there had been a failure by the engineer to certify, because it was found that the amounts due in interim payments should have been higher than the engineer had certified. The court held that certification may be a complex exercise and as such there may be a margin of error either way. Its purpose is not to produce a final determination of the remuneration to which the contractor is entitled, but to provide a fair system of monthly progress payments to be made to the contractor. Simply to assert that sums subsequently awarded were not included in earlier certificates does not, in itself, prove a failure to certify in accordance with the terms of the contract.