To open, we examine the scope, application and likely interpretation of 
force majeure clauses across a range of common law jurisdictions. Franco Mastrandrea’s article, The Rise and Rise of Force Majeure in Construction, orients the reader with a historical overview of the growing acceptance in common law jurisprudence of situations where the absoluteness of contractual obligations – manifested in the objective meaning of the written word – can be said to be frustrated, impossible or otherwise modifiable. After explaining how the common law world has drifted away from the early view that risk remains with the contractor until works are complete, Mastrandrea maps out salient questions that determine how a force majeure clause will be treated across jurisdictions including the US, Singapore and the UK. For example, when will a party be required to prove attempts to mitigate an event which is claimed to constitute force majeure? Understanding how these nuances play out in different jurisdictions is a sine qua non for anyone interested in drafting contracts that accurately reflect the appetite for risk of participants in a construction project.

It is often said that nothing in life is free. This concern could be said to animate Iris Bienert’s critique of changes to time bars between the 1999 and 2017 editions of the FIDIC Redbook. In FIDIC Time Bars: Fair Risk Allocation or Increased Ambiguity?, the author asks whether the 2017 standard form has bought marginal increases in fairness for the price of exorbitant administrative effort in managing contracts. Bienert identifies five major changes in the 2017 version, which range from clarifying the form in which Notice must be given, to requiring more bilateral communication through “Advance Warnings” and giving the engineer a power to relax time bars in certain circumstances. Bienert subjects each of these mechanisms to a robust examination of pros and cons, leading her to conclude that with every exemption, condition and interpretative freedom that has been added to enhance fairness, another ambiguity or source of administrative burden accrues. The article concludes with some intriguing forecasts about the impact of amplified administrative burdens on the German construction industry, intimating that organisations will need to expand already strained budgets to begin hiring dedicated contract administrators and managers. This will constitute a marked change from traditional German approaches where project managers focus on practical project progression rather than legal compliance.