International Construction Law Review
FIDIC’S NEW RAINBOW 1ST EDITION—AN ADVANCE?
EDWARD CORBETT
Principal, Corbett & Co., author of FIDIC 4th—A Practical Legal Guide and member of the task group that drafted the new FIDIC Short Form *
INTRODUCTION
A few months after the launch of the new suite of conditions, it is perhaps timely to make an initial appraisal of their quality and likely impact. This review will cover only the major forms and not the Short Form with which the author is implicated. The suite of major forms comprises:
- the Conditions of Contract for Construction;
- the Conditions of Contract for Plant and Design-Build;
- the Conditions of Contract for EPC and Turnkey;
which will be referred to respectively as the Red, Yellow and Silver Books. (FIDIC have expressed the preference that the new forms should not be known by their colours but this seems inevitable, not least as they have been published in coloured jackets.)
The declared objectives of the new suite are to achieve a user-friendly set of forms, logically organised, using similar wording wherever possible across the suite. It is said to be updated to take into account current market conditions, a factor epitomised by the Silver Book which is intended to reflect the growth of BOT and other turnkey contracting.
The first notable feature of the forms is their length. There is an enormous increase in the word-count, approaching an additional 30% compared to the 4th Edition. With an overall reduction of Sub-Clauses from some 185 in the 72 Clauses in the old 4th Edition to some 165 in the 20 Clauses of the new forms, the statistics make it plain that the average Clause length has increased by a third. This is immediately apparent when reading the documents. Many familiar Clauses have become elaborate, sometimes with new concepts but often with additional boiler-plate of variable value.
The second, closely related point, is the consequence of the 20-Clause format. The Clauses themselves are chapters; the Sub-Clauses deal with a topic each. The draftsmen decided to avoid the use of Sub-Sub-Clauses or other subdivision of the Sub-Clauses. The result is that the Sub-Clauses, although not much reduced in number, now cover the entire topic, often in a considerable number of paragraphs. For example, the subject-matter of Clause 53 (Procedure for Claims) of the old Fourth Edition, which was divided into five labelled Sub-Clauses, is now a single clause with nine
[2000
The International Construction Law Review
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