We’ve spoken about them here before. And we know how the system works here in Ireland. Here it is, out in the open, disagreements are dealt with privately behind closed doors.
quote. Sources familiar with public contracts in Poland say that, after post-communist years marked by cronyism and corruption in public life, the pendulum has swung the other way with an acute fear in public bodies of making decisions – particularly involving large infrastructure projects.
Mr Sullivan says this reflects his experience dealing with GDDKiA. Rather than seek an amicable solution, he said, officials preferred to let courts decide.
It was a culture shock from Ireland where, he says, the National Roads Authority (NRA) resolves disagreements quickly and behind closed doors.quote
Wow Just Wow… You see ye cannot bate that cronyism and corruption… begorrah!!!
Materials went up in price as they started constructing a massive road network. Plans were bad requiring variations. Most of the Irish companies partnered up with local Polish firms who took the financial loss and went bust. Sisk put in it’s own working capital.
This is a big problem in Poland and construction contracts generally. The stadium for the final of the Euro football championships had tens of thousands of agreed variations that they wouldn’t pay for and the contractor (Spanish I think) took a huge loss.
Worked with sisk on a joint venture project, the other contractor went bust and sisk took a hit. I generally thought sisk were a decent company in comparison to some of the other large companies.
I had also heard a few years ago that they were struggling with the road projects in Poland as the local suppliers were charging sisk over the odds for materials cause they weren’t local.
Worked with siac on another joint venture and I had a few contractors chasing payment of retention, they were working with ferrovial so not sure who was to blame as such
When I say working with them, I was working part of a design team on the projects
It is defintiely preferable that construction diputes should be resolved confidentially between the parties rather than through arbitration or litigation. That is why many standard form contracts have conciliation built in. Arbitration is as almost as bad as litigation. Arbitration is certainly not a productive way to resolve a dispute.
Also, if the Irish government owed money to SIAC then it shoudl pay it so it is in the pot for employees and preferential creditors. Not paying somebody because that person is going bust is theft pure and simple. The suggestion that the state shoudl have opportunistically robbed SIAC is ridiculous. The headlines if the Government had not made payment and the contractor had gone bust causing job losses would have been a lot worse.