Cases - Trustees of Ampleforth Abbey Trust v Turner & Townsend Project Management Ltd
Record details
- Name
- Trustees of Ampleforth Abbey Trust v Turner & Townsend Project Management Ltd
- Date
- [2012]
- Citation
- EWHC 2137
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Contract administration
- Summary
-
The defendant project managers were retained by the Trust in relation to a project to build new accommodation at a school. The defendant’s retainer included obligations ‘facilitating, assisting and being involved in the procurement of the building contractor and the building contract’. As events turned out, the contractor never signed the building contract and the whole of the works (which were completed late) were procured using letters of intent. The effect of this was that the Trust was not able to claim liquidated damages under the building contract for the late completion of the works.
HHJ Keyser QC held that the defendant had been negligent in failing to take the steps reasonably required of a competent project manager for the purpose of finalising the building contract between the Trust and the contractor. He said that the defendant’s approach of issuing successive letters of intent ‘effectively treated the contract as a dispensable luxury’. The judge did not find that the defendant was responsible for getting the contractor to agree and sign the building contract, but that the defendant had failed to take the necessary steps to make that possible or, alternatively, to warn the Trust that the entirety of the works should not be procured under letters of intent.
The judge also commented (in line with previous authority) that ‘it may be impossible … to define with precision the expression “project manager”.’