An important phone call was expected this morning regarding the contract for the build of NB Oleanna. For a few days we’ve been trying to have a conversation about the basics of our contract, as Julia and Ken are keen to crack on with things but would rather there was a contract between Tyler Wilson and ourselves before they do too much more work. Jonathan had suggested that we should head to Sheffield and that Julia and Ken should be there too. Finding a day that we all could do was starting to prove problematical as Mick is due a hernia operation next week. After a few emails between Julia and myself, we sussed that what needed to be discussed could be done over the phone, saving everyone train fares.

The contract will be based on the industry standard, but our stage payments will be different. Normally your payments are 50% for work that is complete and 50% for the next stage, about four stage payments. For reasons I’m not going to go into now we have agreed that we will have more stage payments during the build than normal, but these will all be paid on completion of each stage, so nothing other than our deposit will be paid up front. Therefore we pay for what exists and Jonathan isn’t forking out too much in advance of our payments. Both sides seem happy with this.

Julia will now draft up a contract for us all to have a look over. This should be with us at some point late next week. Our next meeting with Julia and Ken will be in January, but in the mean time we may get some plans sent to us for comment. Once the contract is in place and the layout settled Jonathan will lay the base plate. This will be later than we’d thought, but canal time is starting to add it’s factor. It does mean that both of us will be able to go and see it happen as Mick should be able to travel by then.