"Well, " said the judge in the scottish case of Robertson Group (Construction) Ltd vs Amey Miller Joint Venture, "it's in the nature of a contract that a party which supplies goods and services expects, or at least hopes, to make a profit of all, or nearly all, commercial activity, and the law must recognise that elementary fact." But in the Robertson Construction contract, Amey Miller, the employer, was insistent that any profit for the £5m of work done was not an entitlement of the builder. It reckoned that the deal was simple: no profit and no overheads. So, let me tell you the story. The project is one of these big school jobs at the Royal High School, Edinburgh. In its lifetime of about 850 years, the school has had a fair bit of construction work done to it. This episode saw the Amey Miller group take charge of the task, then go out to tender for the refurb work. Robertson's £8m bid was all-rightish.
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