Establishing a Variation Claim

In Comfort Management Pte Ltd v OGSP Engineering Pte Ltd and another (No. 2) [2020] SGHC 165, the High Court approved a two-stage approach to establish a variation claim. First a claimant has to show that a valid instruction has been issued for the variation. The instruction has to be issued by a person authorised by the contract for this purpose and it has to be issued on terms which carry an express or implied promise that the claimant would be paid for the varied work. Second, it has to be established that the work ordered falls within the definition of ‘variation’ as intended by the contract. In most cases, this means that the claimant has to demonstrate that the item of work either changes the scope of work to which the original contract sum relates or, alternatively, it is work which is of a different character or has to be executed under different conditions from that originally envisaged.