[2006] EWHC 5 (TCC) 10 January 2006. P appointed A to design and manage the refurbishment of its store. By the time the second-stage tender was issued, little or no design progress had been made, and the vast majority of the works remained as undefined provisional or prime cost sums. When P expressed concerns about this, A assured it that provisional sums would be monitored against actual expenditure, and if greater costs were being expended, savings would be made from other allowances. Because of the significant volume of provisional work, more than 7 500 variation instructions were issued, and substantial cost overruns occurred. P began proceedings, alleging that A had not acted with reasonable care and skill, in that, because of the provisional nature of the design, it should have advised P that there was no real prospect of delivering the project within budget. P also argued that A should have divided the work into two separate contracts, proceeding first with a contract for a unit for which a tenant had already been found and for which a design had been developed. "Held" splitting the contract into two had been both a commercial and technical possibility, and A was therefore in breach of its duty in not advising P to proceed on this basis. So far as the assessment of damages was concerned, there was an almost complete absence of documentation caused by A's default. In the circumstances, the quantum exercise carried out by P's experts, which turned upon the hypothetical evaluation of what cost would, or would not, have occurred had the project been divided, was a valid way of assessing the loss suffered by P.