Free-issue materials

Owners free-issue for concrete reasons: long-lead equipment ordered before the contractor existed, bulk materials bought on frame agreements at prices no single project could get, owner-specified proprietary items, or simple economics of scale across a programme. The contractor installs what it did not buy, and the contract must then answer the questions purchasing normally answers: when items are delivered and where, who inspects and accepts them on receipt, when care, custody and control transfer, who insures them, and who bears surplus, damage and waste.

Each answer is a claim category when left vague. Late free-issue is the classic: the contractor's schedule assumed the owner's delivery dates, and every slip is disruption with the owner's name on it — the mirror image of the risk transfer the owner sought elsewhere in the contract. Receipt disputes are second: defects discovered at installation, months after delivery, litigating whether inspection on arrival was the contractor's duty or a formality.

The quiet administrative burden is reconciliation: owner-supplied quantities against installed quantities against the take-off, with wastage allowances agreed in advance — because material the owner bought and the contractor consumed is an account, and accounts want keeping.