Design risk remains an important, and at times critical, aspect of contract drafting for large infrastructure projects and of contract management during the early stages of such projects. This risk allocation featured in Duncan and Hudson’s “Fitness for purpose obligations under international standard form contracts” and in Glover’s “Understanding and Managing Design Risk under Common Law Jurisdictions ‘Managing Legal Risk to Minimise Disputes’”, both published in 2018 in the ICLR. We return to this theme in the second contribution in this edition, “Design obligations in design-build contracts – recurring issues” in which Joanne Clarke and Andrew Tweeddale reflect on the common issues arising in complex design and build projects, doing so by reference to a trio of recent cases in which judges have had to grapple with contractor design liability, starting with the much written about UK Supreme Court case of MT Højgaard v E.ON, and then, covering the, relatively, less well known cases of SSE Generation Ltd v Hochtief Solutions AG and 125 OBS (Nominees 1) v Lend Lease. Frequently problems arise as a result of voluminous contracts often with various appendices and schedules which are not uncommon in large infrastructure projects. The avoidance of consistency and lack of alignment of the apportionment of risk across these documents is commended, as these are often factors driving disputes in this area. As is often the case, sometimes the most practical advice is the best, if not always the easiest to comply with. In a similar vein the authors highlight the need for parties to fully understand their respective obligations (such as they are) and contractors to check the specified design and the specified design criteria (whether this be design life or service life, which, as was explained in MT Højgaard can be an important distinction).