4. “AND HAVING TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT ANY INFORMATION IN CONNECTION THEREWITH WHICH MAY HAVE BEEN PROVIDED BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE EMPLOYER”. The remedies of the contractor where are any such information is given fraudulently or negligently are dealt with in the previous note.
This addition is also relevant to the important problem of the significance to be given under cl. 12 to information provided by the employer, since the information that the contractor is entitled to take into account in tendering obviously determines the conditions and obstructions which he can reasonably foresee. The solution which the second edition of this book suggested is to be implied into the 4th edition of these Conditions is now written into this edition. Information provided by the employer may be “taken into account” but clearly only so far as reasonable and only as one relevant factor.
The more extensive the information given by the employer about the site, and the more it is based on detailed investigations, the more significance an experienced contractor will reasonably attach to it, and the less it will be practicable for a tenderer to test the information by his own investigations. The difficult question of right balance between supply of information by the employer and investigation by the contractor has already been mentioned and is discussed again in ch. 17 in the context of claims.
Note that the specific right to take into account information provided by the employer and the phrase “so far as is practicable” apply only to the contractor’s duty to investigate the “nature of the ground and sub-soil”, not, e.g., the availability of material.
网友评论