Presentation - Construction Claims and Responses: Effective Writing and Presentation - page 36

1. Good-quality fi les or folders containing the documents.
2. Covers and spine labels showing the necessary information.
3. Clearly tabbed and labelled dividers.
4. Documents printed on good-quality paper.
5. User-friendly and attractive page layouts using good-quality graphics.
6. Headers and footers showing the name of the party making the submis-
sion, the title of the document, page numbers, the document date and,
if necessary, the revision number.
7. Documents included as exhibits presented in a logical order, clearly
and easily identifi able and cross-referenced.
8. The submission contained in separate volumes and/or sections which
are in a logical order, clearly labelled and clearly referenced.
Writing Style
It is highly unlikely that the reviewer of a claim or determination document
will regard it in the same way as a well-written novel, but as has
been discussed previously, it is important to make the document as user-
friendly as possible and this includes the writing style. The narrative
should fl ow, be easily readable and, of course, it should be properly under-
stood. It is very annoying for a reviewer to have to reread parts of a nar-
rative in order to try to make sense of what is written. Use of correct
grammar and punctuation as well as a free-fl owing writing style is impor-
tant here.
Possibly persons intimately involved on a project would understand
that an abbreviation such as 'BL2' is used on the project instead of
writing 'Basement Level 2' each and every time such a reference is
used, but it is doubtful whether an outside party would understand the
meaning without further explanation. For this reason, abbreviations
and acronyms should be avoided unless they are in common usage within
the industry and would be understood by anyone not familiar with the
project. At the very least, abbreviations and acronyms that are used should
be defi ned the fi rst time that they are used in the document, for example,
'Basement Level 2 (hereinafter referred to as BL2)'. Similarly, the use of
legalese, Latin tags, obscure or infrequently-used words and complicated
language can have an equally detrimental effect on a proper understand-
ing of a narrative. This is particularly relevant if some of the people
involved in the issue do not have the language in which the document
is written as a fi rst language. Claims 'experts' sometimes have a propen-
sity to bolster up their arguments, or possibly to impress the reviewer
with their knowledge, by the frequent use of complicated language and
legalese. Whilst this may possibly have a place if the reviewer is an arbi-
trator, lawyer or judge whose vocation demands an understanding of such
language, it may not have the desired effect on a residential engineer
who has spent his professional career on site, amongst mud, steel and