Real Estate & Construction

Construction Contracts

Scope, payment milestones, variations, delay and defect liability — agreed in writing before the first invoice, instead of argued about after the last one.

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Tell us the situation and we will tell you what we think you should do — and what it will cost.

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Owners engaging a contractor to build or renovate
Contractors who need terms that protect their payment
Developers contracting works across a project
Homeowners building a house on their own land

Contract drafting and review, for the owner’s or the contractor’s side

Payment schedules tied to verifiable milestones, not the calendar

Variation procedures that price the change before the work is done

Delay — liquidated damages, extensions of time and their conditions

Defect liability, retention and the release conditions

Termination, suspension and step-in rights

Understand the works, the budget and the risk each side carries
Draft or mark up the contract with the schedules that matter — scope, price, programme
Negotiate the payment, delay and defect provisions
Finalise and sign, with the variation procedure agreed in advance
Support during the works — variations, notices and payment certificates
Handover, the defect list and the retention release

Documents to prepare

Drawings, specifications or the builder’s quotation
The draft contract, if one has been proposed
Title or lease documents for the site
The building permit position, where works have been approved
Records of anything already paid or agreed

Because the quotation is silent on everything that goes wrong: what exactly is included, what happens when it rains for a month, who pays for the change you asked for verbally, and what “finished” means. On those points silence favours whoever holds the money — or the site — at the time of the argument.

A portion of each payment held back until the defect-liability period ends, so the contractor has a financial reason to come back and fix things. The percentage and the release conditions are negotiable — what matters is that release is tied to defects actually remedied, not to a date alone.

The Civil and Commercial Code sets default defect-liability periods for construction — longer for structural failure — and the contract can extend or structure them further. The period only helps if handover and defect notices are documented, which is what our contracts make routine.

No. A written agreement signed mid-project still fixes the scope, the money and the completion terms from here forward, and records what has been paid and built so far. It is worth less than one signed at the start — and considerably more than none at the end.

Withholding has rules. Done in the wrong way or the wrong amount, it hands the contractor a breach claim against you and a reason to leave site. The contract’s notice and remedy steps exist precisely for this moment — following them keeps the leverage on your side.

Lawyers for this matter

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