Representation of the client (plaintiff) in a dispute with the Administration of one of the municipal districts regarding the extension of the contractual deadlines

The background of the case 

The client is a company engaged in the construction of wastewater disposal facilities. 

While the client was performing construction works, circumstances that made it impossible to complete the works within the stipulated timeframe arose. 

It was necessary to prove that periods of numerous amendments to the project documentation had made it impossible to complete the contract within the agreed deadlines. 

The judicial practice is based on the fact that an increase in the period of work execution can't be ignored by the time spent on obtaining positive conclusions of the expert examination of the project documentation. The main feature of the considered court dispute was the fact that the amendments to the project documentation were made in the order of project support, which was made without going through the state expertise.

The main difficulty in the proving was in applying the mentioned court practice by analogy to the dispute with the participation of the client, in other words, to the case of making changes to the project documentation without passing the state expertise. 

Despite the fact that the court insisted that the client could be informed about the project documentation at the stage of participation in the tender (in advance), we managed to prove that the changes in the project documentation were caused by a change in objective circumstances, as well as to apply by analogy the legal practice of extending the deadlines for work under the contract [АР2] in case of state expert review of project documentation.

The court approved the claims and extended the contractual deadlines for almost one year.