Quote:
Originally Posted by valo403
And don't tell me that you know the ins and outs of the deal if you don't. This issue wouldn't have even come up if Graham had no legitimate claim to payment.
|
I suspect that Graham feels that the city's prequalification of the steel fabricators places some of the blame on the city for prequalifying this specific fabricator that really screwed up.
They may have a case if the city approved a contractor that actually was unqualified to do the work, or if the city was negligent somehow in doing the prequalification. However, I see no reason to suspect that the fabricator was incapable of doing the work - they had done similar type work in the past, probably without issue. Negligence is possible but really quite unlikely, the negligence would likely have to get by the whole city team that was working on it, with nobody noticing that something was wrong.
The most likely scenario (by far) is that the fabricator was capable of doing the job, but really screwed up this time. Like I said before, the fault is likely on the fabricator, but Graham can't get money out of them at this point. Graham is left out the money, and Graham is ultimately responsible for the subcontractor's work. The bridge, now finished, is completed to specs, and the city had a fixed price contract with Graham that paid Graham a specific amount of money to supply and build the bridge to those specs.
The bridge is built, contract is paid in full as per the agreement. Again, I don't know what would entitle Graham to more money. There would have to be a change in the scope of the project for Graham to claim more money, however, correcting problems with a bridge not welded to specifications is not a change in scope.