Techno Legal Aspect of FIDIC Contract

Abstract

Man has been having commercial freedom of entering into contract, ever since the beginning of Barter system. It was exchange of goods and/or services by people for their convenience. Over a period, it became necessary that the habitat had to grow and require many more persons to be engaged for construction activities. This required a system which was commercially viable for exchange of promises. This resulted into evolving a draft contract as document of legal enforceability. Different groups proposed different drafts and therefore various types of disputes arose with respect to legal interpretation of different clauses. Different countries and different organisations came out with different drafts of contracts. This exercise got regionalized and therefore it did not have international commercialization of contracts. Over a period, many countries thought to have a standard form of contract and this required for an internationally acceptable draft for contracting business. The acronym FIDIC stands for Federation Internationale des Ingenieurs-Conseil. These are books with different types of contract drafts built into them. Over a period it has grown into what is known as ‘rainbow of FIDIC’ with different colours of books used for different purposes. The original edition was a Red Book, published in 1957. Over last few years, FIDIC has published many versions of new contracts, the first amongst them was Orange Book for design build contracts in 1995. In 1999, FIDIC published some more contracts, a Green Book as a short form of contract and a Silver Book for Turnkey contracts. In 2007, it published the Gold Book for design, build and operate contracts. The FIDIC forms can be used for a range of contracts. Progressively, the clauses in contracts are capable of more clear interpretation of law. The Green Book first published in 1999 has Agreement, General conditions, Rules of adjudication and Notes for guidance. The clauses related to various terms and conditions will be interpreted on the basis of respective laws of the country on which these sets of FIDIC contract are being used for performance of work. Apart from the law, the techno-legal interpretation and trade practices in various countries governed the enforceability of various clauses. It is intended that the study must include the opinion and views of industry and thereby it is desired to collect the views of industry leaders through discussion and questionnaire besides study of literature related to FIDIC. Ultimately it is the thorough knowledge of interpretation of various obligations which lead to performance project with zero disputes. By and large today FIDIC set of documents of contract offer the best documents to enter into contracts of various types related to construction industry.