474 days claimed. The court allowed one.
A tunnel under Gibraltar's airport runway, a FIDIC design-and-build contract, and a 28-day notice rule that decided everything. The film follows the judgment from the programme windows to the court's count.
When your project records are on the CIG, you can trace why the court allowed only 1 of the 474 days claimed, and a missing notice shows up while there is still time to send it.
Transcript
- 0:00Gibraltar's road from Spain runs straight across the airport runway, so it closes whenever a plane moves.
- 0:05The Government of Gibraltar hired OHL, a Spanish contractor, to design and build a tunnel under the runway's eastern end, on a FIDIC Yellow Book contract from 1 December 2008, with completion due on 30 November 2010.
- 0:13The tunnel was the critical path, the chain of work that sets the finish date: a day lost on it was a day lost on the whole job.
- 0:23The biggest delay was the design: five submissions in a year, four sent back for a brick lining the contract did not allow. It came in 295 days late, at OHL's own risk.
- 0:31The walls took more than four times their programmed 65 days, and the job was still unfinished when Gibraltar served notice terminating it in July 2011.
- 0:40OHL claimed 474 extra days. The court allowed one. Why one?
- 0:44On Akil CIG, the Construction Intelligence Graph, the whole case is one graph: every letter between the two sides, every event, and the court's decisions, laid out by date.
- 0:51The record splits the critical path into seven windows. Five were OHL's own risk and earned nothing. The Hard Rock Excavation Event and the Rain Event earned 7 days.
- 0:59Both were measured. The Hard Rock Excavation Event: 16 hours of chiselling on one wall panel, of which the court counted 10 as unforeseeable rock: one night shift, so 1 day.
- 1:07The Rain Event: ten days over twenty millimetres against a normal four, so 6 days.
- 1:13Clause 20.1: a contractor wanting more time must give written notice within 28 days of becoming aware, or lose it. On the CIG, the documents OHL relied on as notices sit beside the two events they were about.
- 1:21The rock: OHL hit rock in May 2010 and wrote to the Engineer on 14 July that the excavation of all rock would entitle it to more time. The court held that letter was a claim, and it came before the September rock that cost the day, so the 1 day stood.
- 1:32For the rain, OHL relied on its December progress report and a letter of 10 January 2011. The court found the report was clearly nowhere near a notice, and the letter gave notice of future ponding, not of the rain. The 6 rain days were barred: 7 became 1.
- 1:45OHL gave no notice for the Rain Event, so it lost those 6 days. They would not have saved the contract: little more than a quarter of the work was done at the termination notice, and the Court of Appeal upheld the termination in 2015.
The case on one sheet
- Scheme
- A road tunnel under the eastern end of Gibraltar Airport's runway, for the Government of Gibraltar
- ¶1 · ¶4
- Why a tunnel
- The road from the Spanish border crosses the runway itself, and closes whenever aircraft move
- ¶4
- Contract
- FIDIC Yellow Book, design and build; 24 months from 1 December 2008, completion due 30 November 2010
- ¶10 · ¶18
- Delay damages
- £5,000 a day
- ¶11
- Parties
- OHL, Spain (contractor) · Government of Gibraltar (employer)
- ¶1
- The critical path
- The tunnel set the finish date: a day lost on it was a day lost on the whole job
- ¶276
- The claim
- 474 extra days claimed; the court allowed one
- ¶274 · ¶316
- Claimed
- 474 days
- ¶274
- Causal windows
- 7 on the critical path — five at OHL's own risk, earning nothing
- ¶272 · ¶283–311
- Rock, measured
- 16 hours of chiselling on one panel, 10 hours unforeseeable, one night shift: 1 day
- ¶270 · ¶287 · ¶291
- Rain, measured
- 10 days over 20 mm against a normal 4: 6 days
- ¶291
- Notified in time
- Rock only — the letter of 14 July 2010
- ¶315
- Allowed
- 1 day
- ¶316
What the court decided
“clearly nowhere near”¶316
The court on OHL's December progress report, offered as a notice for the rain. Clause 20.1 wanted written notice within 28 days of becoming aware, or the time was lost — a condition precedent OHL accepted. ¶17 · ¶311
The rock was different: OHL hit it in May 2010 and wrote to the Engineer on 14 July that excavating all rock would entitle it to more time. The court held that letter was a claim, and it came before the September rock that cost the day — so the 1 day stood. ¶315 · ¶316
The 6 rain days would not have saved the contract: little more than a quarter of the work was done when Gibraltar served its termination notice on 28 July 2011, with the job the best part of 23 months late even on OHL's own claim. The termination stood, and the Court of Appeal upheld it in 2015. ¶271 · ¶275 · ¶377 · CA ¶151
The graph behind the film
The film's window ledger comes from the judgment read as a graph, each window tied to its cause, whose risk it was, and the paragraph that decided it. We show the live graph in a walkthrough.
- Correspondence and notices
- Programme windows
- Claims
- Contract clauses
- The court's decisions
OHL v Gibraltar, [2014] EWHC 1028 (TCC), on Find Case Law. Contains information licensed under the Open Justice Licence v2.0.
Figures are the judgment's, with paragraph references; derived figures are marked. People are not named.