The New Engineering Contract

The New Engineering Contract (NEC) is a modern day family of standard contracts that truly embraces the concept of partnership and encourages employers, designers, contractors and project managers to work together to achieve the client's objectives. Target cost contracts align the motivations of the parties to decrease costs very effectively. They are increasingly being used due to the trend towards partnering, both for term and project specific partnerships. This contract may be appropriate in the following circumstances: when the scope of the works is not fully defined at the outset; when a high level of flexibility for design changes is anticipated; where both parties can contribute to decreasing the Actual Costs of construction; and for sharing risk where both parties can contribute to the management of the major risks. Each of the main options is printed as a separate document and contains the Core Clauses merged with the applicable main Option Clauses.