Cases - Homer Burgess Ltd v Chirex (Annan) Ltd
Record details
- Name
- Homer Burgess Ltd v Chirex (Annan) Ltd
- Date
- [1999]
- Citation
- Adj.L.R. 11/10
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Construction contracts - adjudication - construction operation - plant - whether pipework was plant - whether the installation of pipework was a construction operation - Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, section 105(1) and (2)
- Summary
-
The work of Homer Burgess involved the installation of pipework linking various pieces of equipment. It was common ground between the parties that the site fell within the exception in section 105(2)(c) of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, so the only issue remaining was whether the pipework was 'plant' or not.
In considering his own jurisdiction, the adjudicator had recourse to his personal expertise in the process and engineering industry and concluded that in that industry pipework was not ordinarily regarded as plant.
The court took consideration of the fact that 'plant' was not defined within the Act but that it was a phrase that has been used in legislation for well over 100 years. In particular, the court was referred to a long line of cases that concluded that 'plant' was anything by means of which the operations of the business will perform, as distinct from the setting for premises in which the operations took place. This was the test adopted by the court in CIR v Barclay Curle (2004) which led to the conclusion that a dry dock was part of the plant rather than part of the premises. The court therefore concluded that the adjudicator was wrong to rely on a special meaning of the word within the process and engineering industry (assuming that the conclusion of applying his own personal expertise was shared by fellow practitioners within that industry), but instead should have applied the general meaning of the word defined by the 'tax' cases predating the Act.
The court concluded that the pipework was clearly part of the plant being assembled or installed on the site. Without such pipework, the individual pieces of machinery or equipment would be unable to operate. The pipework is in a real sense part of the apparatus which, once it was installed, was going to be used in order to carry out the business of manufacturing pharmaceuticals. Therefore, the installation of pipework was an operation that fell within the scope of the exception in section 105(2)(c) of the Act and was accordingly not a construction operation.