Contractor Sir Robert McAlpine is embroiled in a legal dispute over the £70m Lloyd's Register of Shipping headquarters in Fenchurch Streer, central London.
A writ served by client Lloyd's Register comes after the project was finished late. It was completed March 2000, 42 weeks behind schedule. The scheme, designed by Richard Rogers Partnership, was due to be completed in August 1999. The architect issued a certificate of non-completion for the job on 22 March, the writ says.

The writ challenges an adjudication between Lloyd's Register and McAlpine, which was won by the contractor. This allowed McAlpine "time at large" to finish the job, meaning that it could do so outside the contractual machinery.

The writ says the scheme's project manager, Insignia Richard Ellis, allowed McAlpine a time extensions of 26 days for difficulties with the existing structure, and 20 days for late information about steelwork. But the writ says that McAlpine remained obliged to complete the works by the completion date and that Lloyd's was entitled to damages for delay.

It alleges that McAlpine issued numerous notices of variations, and that of the 754 notices issued by the contractor, 176 were later withdrawn, 22 were not formally issued and 82 remain in dispute in principle.

The scheme was completed almost a quarter of a century after Richard Rogers won a competition to design the Lloyd's headquarters. McAlpine first signed the contract to build the 38,000 m2 Lloyd's Register of Shipping headquarters building in 1996.