The Nature of Military Construction Contracts
A construction contract for a military-purpose facility — a training range, a hangar, a depot or infrastructure — is, in legal terms, an ordinary contract for work: Georgia has no separate statute on military construction, and the parties' relationship stands on the works-contract norms of the Civil Code. The "military" dimension of the relationship concerns clearances, classification and admission rules more than the contract machinery: a state or military customer also requires the administrative-contract form, and construction permits obey the general regime of licences and permits — separate contours. This page explains the civil-law frame in which every military construction contract is drafted: concept, security, termination, materials, remuneration and acceptance.
The Concept and the Contractor's Security
Under a works contract, the contractor undertakes to perform the work provided for in the contract, and the customer is obliged to pay the agreed remuneration. Where the work involves the production of an item and the contractor produces it from materials acquired by himself, he transfers to the customer ownership of the item produced; where a generic item is produced, the rules on sale apply. The drawing up of a cost estimate for the work is not reimbursed unless otherwise agreed — a detail that tender practice often treats as automatically expected, while in reality it is a separate object of agreement. The contractor's statutory security instrument is also part of this chapter: where the object of the contract is a building or parts of it, the contractor may demand a mortgage over the plot of land for his claims — a statutory security created by the Code that operates in military orders as well.
Termination, Materials and Accountability
Termination in this chapter is liberally framed: the customer may refuse the contract at any time before completion of the work, but must compensate the contractor for the work performed and the damage caused by the termination — a norm that addresses the risk of budget cuts or shifting priorities in long-term military programmes. The materials contour cuts both ways: a contractor who performs the work with his own materials is answerable for defective materials; he is also answerable for improper use of the customer's materials, is obliged to submit to the customer an account of the use of materials and to return the remaining materials — obligations that on military sites, where the use of materials is separately recorded, carry administrative weight as well. The payment rule is simple: the customer must pay the contractor the remuneration after completion of the work, unless the contract provides for payment in parts.