Rights of contractors on recovery of payment after termination of contract under CIPAA 2012

The Malaysia construction industry has suffered from the reputation as being less efficient and prone to conflict, mainly due to the relationship between main contractors and subcontractors. It has been so-called that main contractors have abused their dominant position in the contractual relationship to withhold monies due to the subcontractors by deploying “pay-when-paid” or “pay-if-paid” clause in their contract with the sole purpose of increasing their own profit margins. The conventional forms of dispute resolution (i.e. arbitration and litigation) indirectly turned-down the contractors from further pursuing their rights to recover the remaining payment after terminated their contracts due to non-payment. This is because of the long period taken and rather expensive and the chance to succeed is rather rare. This research attempts to identify the legal rights of the contractor to recover his remaining payment after the termination of his contract under the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012 (CIPAA 2012). CIPAA was became law on 22 June 2012, has provided another option to the forms of dispute resolution in Malaysia. The Act was intended to address payment issues in the construction industry which involves non-payment and delay in payment. The research methodology utilized primary data and secondary data, i.e. law journals, books, conference articles, etc. including a review of a large section of published literature. The findings obtained basically shows that CIPAA allows contractors to terminate their contracts in the event of employer?s failure to pay and the only last resort to recover the remaining payment is through the arbitration or litigation process if employer continue withhold the payment unreasonably. Legal cases decided under CIPAA and supported by cases from a similar Act from United Kingdom which is the first to implement statutory adjudication. The analysis have been referred to nine legal cases, the five cases from United Kingdom had allowed employers to refuse making payment of outstanding amount due upon termination of contract based on certain conditions such as the service of withholding notice, issuing pay less notice, contractor?s insolvency, Liquidated Ascertained Damages and default by the contractor. Whereas the four Malaysian cases analyzed stated the conditions for contractors to recover his remaining payments due in contract upon termination, such as the existence of a valid contract or collateral contract, the jurisdiction of the adjudicator and the correct implementation of adjudication under CIPAA. It is concluded that, under CIPAA, contractor may recover his remaining payment as long as the requisites stipulated in CIPAA is abided as the employer may argue on the conduct of the CIPAA itself

Systematic Review of Cost Overrun Research in the Developed and Developing Countries

For decades, reputation of the construction industry has been tainted by poor cost performance caused by project cost overrun. In addition, studies by scholars worldwide have also found cost overrun to be more serious in developing countries compared to the developed countries. Despite the numerous researches addressing the issue of cost overrun in the construction industry through the years, the issue remains. Acknowledging that maintaining good cost performance is a key factor of project success and that the issue has persisted for decades, this study aims to explore the distinction of cost overrun studies that has been conducted between developed nations and developing nations. In achieving this aim, a systematic literature review is performed by following the integrative steps of PSALSAR (Protocol, Search, Appraisal, Synthesis, Analysis and Report) and PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) for screening and selecting the retrieved studies. The synthesis and screening of literatures have yielded with 152 articles which are then classified into their countries, developed countries (44) and developing countries (108). The results indicated a significant difference in the domain of research on cost overrun between the 2 nations. Despite the numerous studies on cost overrun in the developing nations compared to developed nations, the majority of the studies are not directed to any specific type construction while developed nations have moved forward to focus on more specific projects. The project with the highest attention in the developed nations is transport infrastructure construction projects, particularly rail infrastructure projects. The findings of this study have shown that there have been broad studies conducted on cost overrun in both developing nations and developed nations. However, there is a slight lacking in comprehensiveness of cost overrun studies in the developing nations, perhaps future studies on cost overrun in developing nations can be directed to more specific areas of construction projects such as those that have been performed by researchers of the developed nation

Approaches to Improving Occupational Health and Safety of the Nigerian Construction Industry

The alarming figures of occupational accidents in the Nigerian construction industry, which accounted for 39.24% of the fatal accidents between 2014 and 2014, called for the subject matter. Therefore, occupational accidents mentioned earlier prompted this study on the way forward toward the approaches to improving occupational health and safety as well as the prevention of occupational accidents in the Nigerian construction industry. The quantitative method was adopted for this study. The result-revealed approaches to improving occupational health and safety are as follows: the Establishment of the Nigerian Construction Industry Development Board (NCIDB), technical assistance and collaboration among construction professionals, skill development in the management and communication of occupational health and safety, awareness-raising and advocacy on occupational health and safety, Use of International Labour Organization (ILO) mechanism on occupational health and safety, international collaboration with other professional bodies on health and safety, proper monitoring and recording of all injuries, and adequate allocation of resources (human, financial, and technology) on Occupational Health and Safety. The study called for better participation of all stakeholders in the construction industry toward improving occupational health and safety in the workplace and ensuring necessary measures in the prevention of occupational accidents