The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Michael McGrath has welcomed the publication by the Office of Government Procurement of the guidance for parties to public works contracts to establish an Inflation Co-operation Framework.

The documents published today include guidance to public bodies and workbooks.

Minister McGrath noted: “We have developed a comprehensive and agile response to the risk posed by exceptional levels of inflation and supply disruptions that create a challenging and uncertain environment for project delivery.

“The publication of the guidance material and the letter of agreement allows public bodies and their contractors to establish a co-operation framework that will sit alongside the public works contract.

“It will facilitate engagement and a speedy determination of the impacts of exceptional inflation and supply chain disruption.  

In Association with

"The accompanying workbooks will streamline the process through clearly constructed spreadsheets to reduce the workload on both parties in determining the additional costs associated with inflation.”

A template letter of agreement, guidance and workbooks are available on the Capital Works Management Framework for the major forms of contract (PW-CF1 – PW-CF5).

This defines which reliefs are available depending on the form of contract that is in use.  It sets out the process that applies, the formulae and specifies the indices published by the Central Statistics Office which are to be used. 

The workbooks are in a spreadsheet format, incorporating the formulae and the indices specified in the agreement to assist contracting authorities to determine the additional costs arising due to inflation on construction materials and energy where applicable.

The minister added that further documentation will follow to cover the cohort of smaller projects that are typically delivered using the short public works contract.