A good example would be where the employer wishes to make an amendment that requires training for additional work. In the employer`s interest, in this case, this means that the principal representative is examining alternative methods or designs, as well as the impact of costs and delays, to ensure the most effective way to implement the employer`s demand in terms of costs and time. The professional representative is not the employer`s representative. Professional representatives must not get lost outside the provisions of the EPI and the construction contract. If they do, they will be injured and may be responsible for the damage. On the other hand, the mere fact that an employer`s agent has been appointed does not mean that that agent has outsourced the undertaking to act on behalf of the employer in construction-related matters, unless the EPI or construction contract expressly grants that power to the authorized agent. “Achieving a construction project requires teamwork, good communication and competent management in addition to construction skills. If there are disputes and the project documents are not incomplete or not easily accessible, it becomes more difficult to resolve these issues in a longer and more costly way,” Putlitz added. It is not uncommon for the principal contractors in construction contracts to have the power and power to assess the work and to bind the employer to the sums to be paid to the contractor. The main contract to build the JBCC 2000 (established by the Joint Building Contracts Committee Incorporation) is no exception. The amount to be paid to the holder under the JBCC is triggered by the fact that the senior representative issues a certificate of payment to the employer after assessing the amount based on the value of the work done. It is therefore in the loading of hands that the principal representative has a degree of discretion in this assessment. Section 5.6 of the JBCC expressly prohibits the employer from intervening or preventing the exercise of its independent discretion in the performance of its contractual obligations.

The question is: What is prevention or interference with the discretion of the principal? In MSC Depots (Pty) Ltd/WK Construction (Pty) Ltd – another (157/10) [2010] ZASCA 115, the Tribunal found that the employer`s inability to facilitate the payment of a properly issued payment certificate constituted an infringement on the independence of the principal agent. The parties had entered into a construction contract on the basis of the standard provisions of the JBCC, under which the contractor was responsible for carrying out work in accordance with the project provided to him by the employer. In March 2006, the principal representative issued the employer an interim payment certificate for R827 392.03, which was approved by the employer`s director. At the time of the exhibition, the work was almost complete and the employer had taken over the occupancy of the site. However, before the certified amount could be prosecuted, defects in the construction work were found and the employer`s director, who, after authorizing the payment, instructed the senior agent to suspend the payment. He did so on the assumption that the defects were caused by an error in the construction work. In May 2006, the principal representative and the contractor convened a site meeting at which they agreed on a method of recourse to be implemented by the contractor. After the remediation work began, the principal representative asked the contractor to withdraw on the grounds that the remediation work carried out by the contractor would not provide a long-term solution to the deficiencies reported by the employer.