"Dear Mr Lumley " read the letter in pidgin English received by fax from Ross, Byelorussia (where the hell is Byelorussia?) " … We are building in Ross a military town financed by Germany for military men's families withdrawn from East Germany … Please make us an offer to prepare a claim awaiting your offer by fax tomorrow, up to 1pm British time. Yours sincerely … "

Is this somebody setting me up I wonder?

A couple of days and a few phone calls later to Byelorussia (which turned out to be in the west of what was Russia, now Belarus, near Minsk), I had it cracked!

The project was one of about 40 military camps being built by international joint venture contractors (this one being German/ Finnish/Russian) from £5,000 million given by Germany to Russia under an agreement made in 1990, (under seal I hope), between Herr Kohl and Mr Gorbachev, whereby Russia was to remove its army of 400,000 men plus families and 2.6 million tonnes of tanks, planes, helicopters, artillery, combat vehicles and equipment, from East Germany and relocate it to new military camps throughout Russia.

Four years later, by September 1994, the transfer of the army was complete and the last of the military camps, including this one, was fast approaching completion.

The construction contract for the camp at Ross was straightforward. The Contract was between the Russian Government and the Joint Venture Contractor and worth approximately £58 million at straightforward Druk exchange rates. But, as the Russian Contractors' workmen were paid only about £27 per month, the equivalent contract value at European construction rates was probably about £200 million.

The work was managed by Finns and Germans, the Engineer was a purpose made consortium of German consulting engineers, the Conditions of Contract were FIDIC, oh... .and the language of the contract, including of course all the documents and correspondence etc, was in Russian and German.

So no problem!

After several very interesting telephone conferences through Svetlana, a very enthusiastic, skilled young Russian lady, who translated my broken English into Russian for another translator to interpret into Finnish for the project manager and, having received the answer about 10 minutes later, I immediately offered to go to this far off place on the basis that they would provide an inexhaustible supply of the best Russian vodka, make payment of an enormous sum of money into an account of my own choosing and pay Trett afew bob' as well.
 
The client promised to do most of these things and so off I went, departing by taxi from Trett's Christmas party, at (I think) two thirty in the morning, thermals and all. I had, however, been especially cunning and took with me a QS colleague, fluent (so he said) in German, having lived and worked for two years recently in Berlin. If all else failed and we couldn't make head nor tail of it all, I would simply blame him, come home and keep mum.

But we did make sense of it.

With the help of the Contractor's German and Russian staff, plus a little discipline imposed by the ever understanding Svetlana and with the help of the Resident Engineer who, professionally, on behalf of the Engineer and, nationally, on behalf of Germany as a whole, also wanted to honour obligations at a domestic and international level, we put together the framework of a design and build FIDIC based claim.

It was the usual stuff; failure to give timely possession of the site, the late approval of the Contractor's design, imposed additional requirements constituting variations, winter working and Clause 12 different/worse ground conditions (they had to rip out the frozen ground with D8's and load the iced lumps!), plus variations generally and their impact on construction and specific breaches which forced the Contractor to suspend much of the work for the best part of 6 months.

So, my English draft claim, was translated into Russian by the great Svetlana and into German by the equally professional Rachel and the document was duly submitted in both tongues to the Engineer and Employer in Moscow.

Subsequent monthly visits to Moscow, from January to April, for meetings with the Engineer and Employer resulted in settlement of some of the claims. However, a large proportion remains unresolved and it looks like matters may proceed to ICC Arbitration in Vienna - watch this space!

On my visits, I found the long days of work passed quickly. This was no doubt helped by the long nights of enforced R and R, sessions at the saunas (mixed), mega buckets of vodka and brandy, sausages and suckling pigs, dinner parties, music and dancing, all of which left me brain dead (what's new?) on arrival back at Heathrow. 

I must, in closing, express sincerest thanks to my colleague Bob, Managing Director of a German Contractor's UK operation who, when asked by his Weisbaden head office if he knew of any Great British claims consultants who could do a job for a mate of a mate in Russia, gave them my name.

Thanks Bob!