Tony Bingham (“KISS and tell”, 14 September, page 56) may like to know there is a subcontract that meets his requirements – one for which he and Building are partly responsible.

Among the documents sold online by ContractStore is one based on a winning form I submitted for a competition in Building for a one-page contract some years ago. Tony was one of the judges.

If this is too simple for the Olympic Delivery Authority, it should try the JCT Constructing Excellence Contract. This is an enlarged version of the Be Collaborative Contract, which originated from a meeting of the Reading Construction Forum to discuss Sir John Egan’s suggestion that contracts could be replaced by simple purchase orders.

At that meeting, I suggested it would be feasible to develop a purchase order with a short set of terms and conditions that could be used by all parties. The terms got expanded a bit over the years by drafting committees. Stripped back to its essentials, though, it would meet Bingham’s criteria.

Giles Dixon, ContractStore

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