Cases - Sutcliffe v Chippendale & Edmondson

Record details

Name

Sutcliffe v Chippendale

Date

(1982)

Citation

18 BLR 149

Keywords

Contract administration

Summary

In a case in which there was no formal contract between the architect and the employer and where the contractor had entered insolvency after taking the benefit of interim certificates despite there being numerous defects in his work, the court (HHJ Stabb QC) considered the extent to which the architect owed the employer a duty of care.

The judge found that an architect's duty to supervise the contractor's work required him to follow the progress of the work and to take steps to see that the works complied with the general requirements of the contract and the specification.

In exercising his duties of certification, the architect was required to notify the quantity surveyor in advance of any work which he classified as not properly executed so as to give the quantity surveyor an opportunity to exclude it from the valuation.

An architect was required to exclude the value of work from an interim certificate which was not properly executed. If the work was defective and unacceptable as it stood, it had to be classified as work not properly executed until the defect had been remedied.

In carrying out his certification function, the architect is primarily acting for the protection of the employer's interests by determining what payment he can properly make on account. Accordingly, the architect owes the employer a duty to take reasonable care in certifying payments as due.