A Contractor's Guide to the FIDIC Conditions of Contract

This guide will help the contractor's staff overcome some ofthe difficulties encountered on a typical international contractusing FIDIC forms. The majority of FIDIC-based contracts use the Red Book(Conditions of Contract for Construction), so this bookconcentrates on the use of those particular forms. Supplementarycomments are included in Appendix C for the Yellow Book (Plant& Design-Build) recommended for use where the contractor has adesign responsibility. The Contractor is represented on site by the Contractor'sRepresentative who carries the overall responsibility for all theContractor's on-site activities. In order to provide guidanceto the Contractor's Representative and his staff, this bookis divided into five sections: * A summarized general review of the Red Book from theContractor's perspective. * A review of the activities and duties of theContractor's Representative in the same clause sequencing asthey appear in the Red Book. * A summary of these activities and duties but arranged in orderof their likely time sequence on site. This has the added intentionof providing the Contractor's Representative with a means ofensuring that documents are not only properly provided to theEmployer and Engineer, but most importantly that they are providedwithin the time limits specified in the Contract. * A selection of model letters is provided which make referenceto the various clauses of the contract requiring the Contractor tomake submissions to the Employer or Engineer. * Various appendices. The guide is not intended to be a review of the legal aspects ofFIDIC- based contracts; legal advice should be obtained as and whennecessary, particularly if the Contractor has little or noknowledge of the local law. Armed on site with a copy of The Contractor and the FIDICContract, the Contractor's Representative will be more ableto avoid contractual problems rather than spend considerable timeand energy resolving those problems once they have arisen.