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International Construction Law Review

PROJECT PARTNERING IN THE INTERNATIONAL CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

CHRIS SKEGGS

BE Civil, MBA Project Manager, Abigroup Contractors, Sydney

INTRODUCTION

Over the past decades, the international construction industry has observed an increasing frequency of litigation on major international projects. This has often been a consequence of the tendency of employers to minimise their risk profile through passing ever more contractual risk on to the contractor. According to recent experiences of many international contractors, this trend has been mitigated only partly by the general reworking of the accepted industry standard forms of contract issued in 1999 (FIDIC, 1999). This apparent increased risk for contractors has led one leading contractors’ association, the European International Contractors (EIC), to publish their EIC Contractor’s Guides to the three FIDIC “New Books for Major Works”, which have all been published in this Review over the past three years (October 2000, January and July 2003).1 The general perception in the EIC Guides is that the new editions have apparently allocated more contractual risk to the contractor in an already depressed market situation, where it is difficult to pass on the associated additional costs to the client.
Parallel to these developments in the international industry, project partnering has become increasingly established as a non-adversarial and performance enhancing approach to contracting in a number of national markets including the UK and US. Consequently when considering potential strategies for improving the performance of the international construction industry, beyond placing more risk on the contractor, the question arises, can project partnering be also successfully implemented in international contracts? This article investigates project partnering in the context of the international construction industry. Most of the findings are based on a survey response and direct consultations with the leading European construction companies facilitated by EIC.


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International Project Partnering

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