The FIDIC Red Book Contract: An International Clause-by-Clause Commentary

Christopher Seppälä

Apr 2023 · Kluwer Law International B.V.

About this ebook

Conditions of Contract for Construction – known universally as the Red Book – published by the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (known by its French acronym FIDIC) is the most widely used standard form of international construction contract. This book is a detailed commentary on the 2022 reprint of the 2017 FIDIC Red Book. For each of the Red Book’s 168 Sub-Clauses the commentary: identifies changes from the 1999 edition; analyses the meaning and significance of the Sub-Clause and lists related Sub-Clauses; describes related international arbitration awards, national court decisions and legal principles; and, where appropriate, proposes amendments to improve the Sub-Clause. As the FIDIC Yellow and Silver Books are very similar to the Red Book, much of the commentary is equally applicable to those forms of contract. The author is a FIDIC ‘insider’ having served for more than thirty years as Legal/Special Adviser to, or Member of, the FIDIC Contracts Committee which is responsible for preparing FIDIC’s contracts. This book is an indispensable resource for all parties called on to work with a FIDIC contract.

With guidance for every stage of a construction project, whether in drafting, negotiating, performing, interpreting, or administering a FIDIC contract, the book’s easy-to-use structure includes such issues and topics as the following:

• introduction to FIDIC and its contracts and to publications of FIDIC and others relevant to the Red Book including the 2022 FIDIC Contracts Guide;

• critical examination of each Sub-Clause and advice for amending the same in order to better adapt it to the interests of each party (the Employer or the Contractor);

• special attention to each Sub-Clause relating to the Contractor’s and the Employer’s claims and claims procedure and to how to assert claims effectively, as well as to time bars and other pitfalls and how they may be overcome;

• detailed examination of Sub-Clauses relating to the referral of issues or disputes to the Dispute Avoidance/Adjudication Board and, if necessary, to international arbitration, and optimal strategies for doing so;

• discussion of the changes required to the 2017 Red Book by The World Bank’s Conditions of Particular Application (‘COPA’);

• reference, where appropriate, to the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts and trade usages;

• comprehensive discussion of practical issues that arise under common law, civil law and international legal principles, especially when a contract is with a state or public body;

• comparison of common law and civil law methods of contract interpretation and a suggested practical approach to interpretation given a FIDIC contract’s international arbitration clause; and

• overcoming problems that can arise when a contract is governed by the law of a less-developed country.

Legal and technical terms are clearly defined, and numerous figures and tables are included to illustrate steps in contract procedures. Detailed attention is paid to terminological distinctions among the various legal traditions, including a comparison of British-English and American-English construction contract terms.

Unquestionably the most detailed and thorough commentary ever published on the FIDIC Red Book, this highly practical work enables preparers of FIDIC contracts to amend and adapt the Red Book’s provisions to a particular project. Dispute adjudicators, arbitrators, and judges will welcome the book’s authoritative guidance on interpreting the provisions of a FIDIC contract, and engineers and other construction professionals involved in contract administration will appreciate the book’s many practical features.