International Construction Law Review
BOOK REVIEWS
HUMPHREY LLOYD
FIDIC Contracts: Law and Practice. By Ellis Baker, Ben Mellors, Scott Chalmers and Anthony Lavers. London: Informa Law, 2009. ISBN 978–1–843311–628–8. Hardback. 553 pp. plus index. £290.00
FIDIC—A Guide for Practitioners. By Axel-Volkmar Jaeger and GÖtz-Sebastian HÖk. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2010. ISBN 978–3–642–02099–5. Hardback. 435 pp. plus index. £117.00
These works have much in common. They both provide guides to the main suite of current FIDIC contracts—the Red, Yellow, Silver and Gold Books. They are written by authors who are well qualified and known to the readers of this Review. The first work listed above is written by a partner, Ellis Baker with three other members of the London Construction and Engineering Practice Group of the well-known firm of White & Case LLP. I shall therefore refer to them as the White & Case authors. The other book is written by an engineer and a lawyer. Mr Axel-Volkmar Jaeger is a consulting engineer specialising in the mechanical services and a former partner of the firm of Schmidt Reuter Partners based in Cologne. He is the current Chairman of the FIDIC Contracts Committee. The second author is Dr GÖtz-Sebastian HÖk who is a senior partner at the Law Office of Dr HÖk, Steiglmeier & Kollegen in Berlin. I shall call their work the Jaeger/HÖk book. However, even though the MDB version of the Red Book can be copied (and the White & Case authors cover that version in some detail) neither work reproduces the text of any of the forms which are the subject of the commentaries.
The books also have differences. First, although they are, it seems, primarily written for lawyers, the Guide by Mr Jaeger and Dr HÖk has the advantage of having as one of its co-authors an engineer. Secondly, although each has a broadly similar format, the White & Case authors cover the FIDIC forms in considerable detail. The Jaeger/HÖk book treats the forms in less detail. It concentrates on the main points of which a user would need to be aware. It is also written with two constituencies in mind: those who need to be aware of the approach in other jurisdictions (whether civil law or common law) and also, by extension, those who are not lawyers. The purpose of this review is not however to compare each work as if only one had to be chosen but rather as a means of describing and evaluating each. Each has considerable individual strengths.
The White & Case authors begin with a general discussion of FIDIC as an institution. They then consider the FIDIC forms and the structure of a FIDIC contract and move on to examine the parties’ obligations in relation to the works and how they are to be provided, or, in the case of the Gold Book, the operational rights and obligations. The authors then cover
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