case_studies
Getting construction out from under the weather
Weather affects almost every project in the construction industry, and is responsible for, on average, 21% extensions to deadlines. This is serious as it decreases a contractor’s profit margin and delays revenue generation for clients.
The EHAB Weather Ledger project is intended to dramatically reduce the time and cost of weather-related disputes for the construction industry by creating a blockchain based, trusted ‘source of truth’ for weather conditions at high levels of spatial and temporal granularity.
The innovation combines this ‘source of truth’ with UK law compatible smart contract language to create semi-automated, multi-party, legally binding clauses derived from standard NEC construction contract, to eliminate disputes and enable resolution of weather related compensation events in near real time. This will obviate significant manual claim and claim validation processes and reduce litigation. This will be even more relevant as the Climate Crisis escalates, because it will generate more unpredictable weather, disrupting construction in the UK and abroad.
The project focused on the benefits of the use of digital ledgers in construction. In order to highlight this, Connected Places Catapult and Digital Catapult, working with the industry have developed a framework that focuses on the issue of weather delays onsite in order to specify its focus and maximise its outcome in relation to data. Over the last 12 months, the consortium has developed a legal and digital framework to then run a comparative assessment of the use of this system during contract mediation and delay claims compared to traditional, adversarial methods. Connected Places Catapult is leading the Standard and the Impact Assessment work packages.
