ContractStore Legal Business Blog

ContractStore attended the 5th  China International Small & Medium Enterprises Fair in Guangzhou, China this week.

There were some 4000 exhibitors and ContractStore, as one of the companies on the British island, arranged by Global Business Associates, was there to promote our dual language Chinese and English contracts as well as our support services to Chinese companies interested in doing business in the UK.

On the second day ContractStore MD, Giles Dixon and Asia manager, Xie Rong, gave  a well-attended seminar to  visitors on the topic of legal documents for business and establishing a presence in the UK.

Our picture shows ContractStore’s Giles Dixon and Xie Rong with four students from the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, MissLin Qiping, Miss Li Junyu, Mr Xiao Yao and Mr Shen Jianming, who provided enthusiastic support for our marketing activities. We were very impressed by their excellent command of English and their quick understanding of our existing business and objectives.

The Association of Consultant Architects has published a new client contract and in the process has attacked the RIBA for its standard form, published last year.

According to the ACA the RIBA form leaves practices open to ‘potentially disastrous’ professional indemnity insurance (PII) problems as it includes a clause stating  the architect performs ‘his services in accordance with any budget or timescale agreed with the client’.   The ACA maintains that failure to meet this obligation by the architect would not be covered by insurance policies which is ‘ potentially ruinous’  for an architect.

 The ACA claims its own new contract meets the need for a fair and balanced standard form of agreement.   It does, nonetheless, include a ‘no set-off’ clause,  and a provision for the architect to resign from a commission.

A spokesman for the RIBA remarked that ‘a  plethora of different standard contracts is certainly not helpful to either architects or clients.’

Here we agree: any sensible developer  appointing an architect and other professional consultants on a project is advised to steer clear of the forms produced by professional institutions  as they tend to favour the consultant over the client and, as each form is different, they present administrative problems. 

 Much better to use a form that has essentially the same terms and conditions for all the professional team and which is fair to all parties while, at the same time,  looking after the client’s interests. ContractStore’s Appointment of Professional Consultant B100 is recommended. 

 So,  use our document - which is written in clear English  by a construction lawyer - and leave the architectural institutions to argue with each other.