Yachts require a great amount of upkeep, with regular periods in the yard required for yacht refit or maintenance.
Whether conducting a major overhaul or just making a few cosmetic and systems updates, a yacht refit is a large undertaking, requiring excellent scheduling and budgeting, as well as excellent management and coordination of technical and legal aspects.
During a major refit project, delays, increase of costs or even possible conflict between the owner, the crew and the shipyard may arise, and the Stephenson Harwood superyacht team is here to help.
Yacht refit budget overruns are indeed common during shipyard periods – partly due to unknown faults being uncovered during the work, but also due to poor time management or installation problems and delays. Unless a well-defined procedure is established to govern the development, acceptance, pricing, and scheduling of emergent work and change orders, the owner is open to being forced to pay for change orders or emergent work at a unit rate much higher than in the original contract; and he/she may be forced to accept unreasonable delays to the scheduled completion date.
The absence of such a delineated procedure leaves the yard open to having to accept additional, possibly unanticipated work, without adequate compensation and/or adjustment to its contracted delivery schedule. If there are liquidated damages for late delivery called out in the contract, the result is potentially disastrous for the yard.
Our team can assist in negotiating and documenting in a contract including procedure for calculating any schedule changes that will ensue from such work, as well as what the shipyard should do to develop and submit to the buyer, pricing quotes and proposed schedule modifications.
