GVE wins prestigious industry Publishing Award
GVE Commercial Solutions are celebrating following the announcement that members of their team, Andrew Wooldridge-Irving and Alex Tolson, have won a CICES (Chartered Institute of Civil Engineering Surveyors) Publishing Award for their NEC article series on X Options.
GVE’s associate director and NEC specialist Andrew Wooldridge-Irving, and consultant surveyor Alex Tolson, started writing the series on X Options in 2022. The articles featured between May 2022 to January 2023 in CES (Civil Engineering Surveyor), which is an industry-led journal published by the CICES. They won the award in the Commercial Management category.
X Options form part of NEC contracts and have been covered extensively by GVE Commercial Solutions, a commercial consultancy specialising in NEC and JCT forms of contract, to produce accessible resources for construction professionals within the NEC community. Andrew, who regularly writes for industry publications and contributes to online forums, was inspired to produce content specifically on X Options to address a gap in the information available to NEC users. Together with his co-author Alex, a quantity surveying graduate currently based on a large UK infrastructure project, the team focussed on writing practical content, using examples which could be applied to live projects.
The article series followed on from GVE’s NEC Masterclass webinars, whereby host Andrew covered each X option (X1-29) in a 30-minute weekly lunchtime slot. The webinars were broadcasted by GVE Commercial Solutions from September 2021 to June 2022 as a free-of-charge resource to support construction professionals administering NEC contracts.
Jim McCluskey, Chair of the CICES CMPC (Commercial Management Practices Committee) whose members judged the awards, said the series was essential reading for NEC users: “The majority of infrastructure projects procured in the UK are using the NEC Contract. One of its key features is the selection of Optional X clauses appropriate for the project concerned. These articles provide an excellent insight into each X clause, their purpose and how they work in practice, making them invaluable reading for anyone involved in this area of the profession.”
Steve Goodwin, Managing Director at GVE Commercial Solutions said: “This award is a well-deserved accolade, and we are delighted Andrew and Alex have received this recognition from the industry body for civil engineering. GVE shares our practitioners’ contractual expertise through resources such as published articles, to support the continued professional development within the NEC community and to encourage correct use of the contract.”