Plant and Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical and plant engineering is one of the leading industries in Germany and a mainstay of the export economy. For many years, this field has been a consulting focus at COELER LEGAL. We advise plant and mechanical engineering companies, manufacturers, suppliers, project developers and construction companies in a multidisciplinary manner on all legal issues, in particular with an international dimension.

• Advice during the offer phase
• Contract design / Coordination with purchasing / Back-to-Back
• Legal support during project management/Support of the project manager
• Claim Management
• Avoidance of conflict / Dispute resolution
• Advice on warranty matters (i.a. arranging experts, proceedings for the taking of evidence)

Our team consists of specialists with experience in the fields of international and national industrial and plant engineering, Real Estate and Construction Law, Energy law, Company Law, Fiscal Law, as well as law enforcement. It is available at any time, particularly in the following questions:

• Preventive drafting and negotiation of contracts, especially also according to Anglo-Saxon model with special consideration of
  • Avoidance of conflict
  • Risk minimisation
  • Liability regulations
  • Warranty questions
  • Tax considerations
  • Law enforcement (Choice of law and Place of Jurisdiction/Arbitration proceedings)
  • Claim Management, Enforcement of claims and Defence against claims in all project phases
  • Interpretation of Specifications, i.e. functional description of specifications and guaranteed performance characteristics
  • Negotiation and Design of payment plans
  • Implementation of project schedules
  • Enforcement or Defence of additional or changed services
  • Design of warranty obligations
  • Subcontractor / Back-to-Back / Turnkey-Contracts
  • FIDIC / Orgalime / ICC-Conditions
  • VOB / BGB
  • Applicability of foreign legal systems
  • Drafting of General Terms and Conditions (GTC)
  • Review and Design of all sales documentation

Dr. Frank Schmitz Attorney at Law (Member of VDI), Specialist in International Commercial Law. Dr. Frank Schmitz has been working as a consultant in the project business for over 20 years.

• Conveyor systems for a wood processing company in Burgos/Spain- Claim Management, defence against contractual penalties, claims against subcontractors
• Supply of fittings for a municipal water company- Claim Management, defence against warranty claims, recourse
• Delivery of a conveyor system for the German wood industry- Claim Management, defence against warranty claims, contract management, independent evidence proceedings, defence against a contractual penalty
• Delivery of a conveyor system to Australia- Claim Management, defence against warranty claims, contract and process management
• Delivery of plant components for a sugar factory in Austria- Claim Management, defence of claims, dispute settlement
• Delivery of wind turbines to Bulgaria- Claim management, defence of claims, process management
• Delivery of plant components for a sugar factory in Turkey- drafting of contracts
• Delivery of conveyor systems for cement factory in Russia- drafting of contracts
• Delivery of cooling screws to Poland- drafting of contracts, limitation of liability
• Continual advice to various medium-sized plant construction companies on all contractual matters, redesign of the entire sales documentation
• Legal advice and assistance to a planning office for the construction of the Musée Louis Vuitton in Paris- legal examination of the planning contract under French law, liability issues, warranty issues, etc.
• Continual project support for a medium-sized conveyor system manufacturer
• Underground gas cavern in Epe – ESSENT – Project

Legal advice and support for the German market leader in the supply of specially configured gas compressors from the drafting and award of contracts to multi-year claim management under Dutch law through to the final negotiation of all mutual claims. Order value > € 30 million

• Wind farms in France

Legal advice and support to a leading German developer group in the sale of 5 wind farms in France to English and Danish investment funds, drafting contracts in accordance with French law. Order value > € 50 million

• Wind farms in Bulgaria

Legal support, project development, drafting of contracts and negotiations for the sale of various large wind farm projects in Bulgaria for German, Austrian and Norwegian developer groups since 2007. Project volume > € 600 million

• Solar parks in France

Legal advice and assistance in the development and sale of PV projects in France, including islands (Corsica) and overseas departments (Réunion). Project volume > € 50 million

• Railway infrastructure project in Bulgaria

Legal support and representation of a leading European manufacturer of rail fastening systems in the implementation of an infrastructure project in Bulgaria, authorised representative in the ICC arbitration proceedings in Athens

• Offshore wind farms Alpha Ventus / Rödsand / Bard / Baltic 1

Legal support in laying cables for several German and foreign offshore wind farms in the North Sea and Baltic Sea from the drafting of the contract to the total completion of the projects. In particular, handling of projects within the framework of claim management, assertion of own and defence against third-party claims.

• Interior park cabling for Alpha Ventus,
• Interior park cabling for Rödsand,
• Interior park cabling for BARD-Offshore 1,
• Export cable for Baltic 1

• Deep sea telecommunication cables

Legal support for the laying of a submarine cable ring around Indonesia with a total order value of 100 million US dollars. In addition, legal advice on smaller connections, such as the laying of a submarine cable between Malta and Sicily

• Power plant construction

Support of suppliers in the context of power plant construction, e.g. representation of a supplier for the construction of exhaust gas flues for gas power plants in South Africa or the supply of control dampers for a gas and steam power plant in France

• Maritime technology

In the field of maritime technology – legal advice and representation in the event of damage to a ship newbuilding caused by defective oil. In addition, representation of a well-known Dutch rudder blade and rudder system manufacturer in numerous damage cases, advice to a leading producer of ship paints, distribution of ship arrears worldwide

Claim Management (CM) is an essential part of project management, the relevance and potential of which many medium-sized companies in Germany are not yet really aware of. CM is used directly to optimize results in two ways. On the one hand, claims for damages and contractual penalties (penalties, liquidated damages) are fended off, on the other hand, mutually agreed change orders in the area of services and unilaterally enforceable claims for services due to extensions and/or difficulties caused by the customer (e.g. time extension claims).

Claim management should ideally begin at the contract drafting stage, for example with a very precise description of the service to be provided. Flat-rate promises such as “state of the art” invite the client to interpret the bill of quantities in his sense. Inaccurate information from the customer regarding his own services and provision parameters should by no means be accepted. They must be specified as precisely as possible, as otherwise the entrepreneur assumes the risk across the board that this information turns out to be incorrect retrospectively. As a matter of principle, each party should only assume the risk of the correctness of its own information.

Claim Management is the permanent target/actual comparison of performance promises and executed performance, which extends through the entire project, in terms of facts and time, with the aim of asserting the customer’s claims resulting from the deviations in a timely and efficient manner.

We support you with our experience and expertise from the very beginning of the project and help you to implement CM structures already in the contract drafting phase. During the project implementation we actively assist or advise your project management and ensure an efficient assertion of any claims.

 Give us a call or send us an e-mail with your request. We guarantee you a non-binding initial assessment within 24 hours.