International Construction Law Review
WELCOME AMENDMENTS TO FIDIC’S 2017 CONTRACTS
Christopher R Seppälä1
Partner of Counsel, White & Case, Paris; Legal Advisor,
FIDIC Contracts Committee
In November 2022, FIDIC made changes to its Red, Yellow and Silver Book standard forms2 which will be of particular interest to lawyers as they involve, among other things, amended definitions of key terms like “Claim” and “Dispute” and a definition of a “matter to be agreed [by the Parties] or determined [by the Engineer]”, a new concept in the 2017 contracts which, however, they had left undefined. These and other changes are to be found in reprints, published in November 2022, of the 2017 Red, Yellow and Silver Books.3
The 2022 changes are numerous and affect most of the 21 clauses of the general conditions of each standard form as well as its ancillary documents. Many of the amendments are quite minor – such as replacing references to “Dispute Avoidance/Adjudication Agreement” with “DAAB Agreement”, correcting lines or sub-paragraphs that are wrongly indented, replacing references to “an entity” with “a legal entity” and generally clarifying language – and will not be discussed here. But, whether minor or major, all the amendments are welcome as, in the view of the author, they significantly improve FIDIC’s 2017 forms.
This paper will discuss three changes which appear most important from a legal perspective, as follows:
- 1. The amended definition of the term “Claim”;
- 2. The definition of a “matter to be agreed or determined”; and
- 3. The amended definition of the term “Dispute”.
1 Christopher is the author of a forthcoming book, The FIDIC Red Book Contract: An International Clause-by-Clause Commentary, to be published in 2023 by Kluwer International. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and not of any firm, organisation or committee with which he is affiliated.
2 The Red Book being entitled “Conditions of Contract for Construction”, 2017, the Yellow Book being entitled “Conditions of Contract for Plant and Design-Build”, 2017, and the Silver Book being entitled “Conditions of Contract for EPC/Turnkey Projects”, 2017.
3 FIDIC had previously published two errata sheets for the Red, Yellow and Silver Books (the “Rainbow Suite”) in 2018 and 2019, respectively. However, the new changes are rightly described by FIDIC not merely as “errata” but as amendments or significant changes to the Rainbow Suite.
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