by Tim Grierson, Head of Dilapidations, Delva Patman Redler

With the view to helping us all and to save you time, I’ve gathered the following information to help us all make informed decisions on live sites and want to share my findings here:

We must do what is best to help the UK’s at risk people by social distancing and following government guidelines for ‘people’, and ‘employees, employers and businesses’. Email updates from government can be obtained here.

Further to this, if sensible, and you are able, please do consider volunteering for the NHS or your local council.

If you are a Client: your Surveyor, Architect & Legal Team will collectively be able to advise you on what your best, case specific course of action is; practically & contractually. Some consultancy tasks can be accelerated now and benefit from the situation.

At present the majority of builders’ merchants are now closed and therefore the only course of action may be to pause works until the Government releases the next statement on COVID-19, in relation to social distancing, as builders are presently struggling or unable to get construction materials.

If your site/trades do have the materials they require, when deciding whether to shut a site, a construction site professional should as a minimum be considering the following guidance:

Construction Industry Council – CIC response to COVID-19 outbreak

Key: What sites should remain open?

Construction Leadership Council – News

Mandatory: Site Operating Procedures during Covid-19

RICS – RICS Response to Covid-19 (Coronavirus)

Key/Mandatory: How to deal with coronavirus under NEC and JCT contracts | 9 April 2020 05:00 PM – 06:15 PM

Chartered Association of Building Engineers – COVID-19 – 25/03/20

Federation of Master Builders – Responding to Coronavirus (Covid-19)

CLC – The Specialist Property Law Regulator – Coronavirus: Resources and Information

BuildUK – Coronavirus Impact on Construction

Building – Coronavirus and Construction

I hope this information is helpful to you. If you have any queries, thoughts or tasks you need help with, please do not hesitate in contacting me or any other member of the Delva Patman Redler team.

Stay safe.