| dc.description.abstract | Within the contract of public works, supervision service is normally appointed until the project acceptance. However, in practice, the project is often delayed due to the extension of construction time. It results in dispute over the service fee that shall be paid to the supervisory company during the duration of the delay. There is still no constant understanding nor clear definition of reasonable calculation regarding supervision service fee, the nature of the contract, and the claim time limitation for the service fee.
The data collected for this study were the judgments of 22 local courts regarding fees of supervision services in Taiwan, as well as a total of 71 cases in the ＂Legal Court Jurisprudential Information Retrieval System＂ from the beginning of 2011 to the end of 2017. According to statistics, the calculation of supervision fees in court disputes were mostly based on the construction cost percentage and the consolidated pricing method. However, the court judgments tend not to allow additional service fee for the extended construction duration. As for the nature of the contract, the courts have no unanimous opinion be it for a simple supervision contract, design and supervision contract, or project management including supervision contract.
A comparison of the supervision contract models of various agencies was conducted, resulting in questionnaires for interviews. The interviews were conducted with 18 experts including law professors, lawyers, agencies, and firms of engineering consultants. Result shows most experts believe that a simple supervision contract should be defined as a contract of appointment; a design and supervision contract should be defined as a hybrid contract; and a project management plus supervision contract can also be classified as an appointment contract. In addition, most experts believe that the supervision service period should be specified in the contract, and the calculation of the period shall be negotiated by both of the owner and the contractor. The reasonable period should be the construction period and the reasonable acceptance period. The supervision service shall adopt the monthly, daily or hourly payment method, the service cost plus fee method, and it should be able to reflect the cost incurred due to length of the duration. It is suggested that the calculation of service cost plus fee method should be simplified.
Finally, the contract and the regulations are proposed to improve. The study can be beneficial to both the governments and contractors by providing a reference to reduce the occurrence of related disputes and reduce additional costs inflicted by such disputes. | en_US |