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9. Clause 32.1 of the Contract provides an early warning stipulation to the following effect:

32. Early Warning:
32.1 The contractor is to warn the Engineer at the earliest opportunity of specific likely future events or circumstances that may adversely affect the quality of the work, increase the Contract Price or delay the execution of work. The Engineer may require the Contractor to provide an estimate of the expected effect of the future event or circumstances on the Contract Price and Completion Date. The estimate is to be provided by the Contractor as soon as reasonably possible.
40.4 If the Engineer decides that the urgency of varying the work would prevent a quotation being given and considered without delaying the work, no quotation shall be given and the variation shall be treated as a compensation event.
40.5 The contractor shall not be entitled to additional payment for costs, which would have been avoided by giving early warning.

Clause 44.1 of the Contract enunciates what are termed as Events of Compensation. These are regarded as Compensation Events if they are attributable to the Petitioner. Amongst the Compensation Events is the failure of the Petitioner to grant access to a part of the Site by the Site Possession Date; delay in the issuance of drawings, specifications or instructions; and where ground conditions prove to be substantially more adverse than was reasonably assumed before the issuance of the Letter of Acceptance. Clauses 44.2 and 44.3 of the Contract are material for the purposes of the present proceedings and it would, therefore, be necessary to refer to them in extenso:

12. The Contract in the present case cannot be regarded as prohibiting extra payments. There is merit in the submission that a reading of the entirety of the contract would indicate that although lump sum bids were invited, the contract did not prohibit extra payment for extra work. The contract envisages the appointment of an Engineer for supervising the execution of work and administering the contract and his functions are by definition to include issuing and valuing variations, recommending extensions of time and valuing compensation events. The definition of the expression "contract price" envisages adjustment after the letter of acceptance, in accordance with the terms of the contract. Under the early warning provision in Clause 32.1, the contractor was to intimate the Engineer of likely events or circumstances that may affect the work or increase the contract price. The requirement of such an intimation would have no meaning unless the contract were to imply a variation of the contract price as a result of events or circumstances that took place after acceptance. In such cases it was the Engineer who was empowered to assess, in the first instance, the legitimacy of the contractors demand. The contract envisages that where an additional cost could have been avoided by furnishing an early warning, the Contractor would not be entitled to additional payment. This again is an other indicator that additional payments were not prohibited so long as they fell within the purview of the terms of the Contract. The valuation of work was to include valuing variations and compensation events. It is in this background that the provisions of the contract will have to be construed. Clause 13.4 of the Instructions to Bidders and Clause 44.2 cannot be read in isolation. In fact, Clause 44.2 is immediately followed by Clause 44.3 which prescribes machinery for the adjustment of the contract price upon the occurrence of a compensation event. Clause 44.3 envisages that once the Contractor has demonstrated the effect of a compensation event on the costs that were forecast, it was for the Engineer to assess the claim and adjust the price accordingly. The totality of the contractual provisions would, therefore, militate against the acceptance of the view that the contract as envisaged is a lump sum contract in the strictest possible sense in which variations and additional payments were absolute barred. The contractual provisions are liable to give rise to an inference to the contrary.