The administration of the 'botched' FIDIC contract: the problems arising out of the administration of a wrongly 'slanted' contract for turnkey projects

Contracts used in the building industry have undergone severely radical changes in concept and scope over the last ten, or so, years. For example, the norm was, until quite recently, for the Architect not only to be the principal designer of "the Works", the subject of a development, but additionally, the supervisor of the construction process as well. Today, however, forms of contract are currently in use where the Architect merely prepares an outline conceptual design which is then passed over to a contractor for him to develop and then build, viz a "design and build" contract, or where he is not the person responsible for supervising the design development coordination and named in the Contract for the purposes of supervising the construction process. Careful drafting is required in the production of any building contract, given that such contracts tend to be characteristically dynamic in nature (essentially a tendency to open-endedness) due, almost always, to incompleteness of the design, client changes of the design, or response to interface incompatibility, or site conditions which can affect the design, the programme and cost. Drafting problems, and related difficulties in the administration of the Contract, become that much more acute in the circumstances, where a contract, slanted (in terms of drafting) to provide the requisite directions to achieve a specific given end, are re-slanted to provide an entirely different end. Problems arising from such Contracts have arisen in the case of the International Civil Engineering Works Contract (FIDIC) where it has been transformed ("botched") from a contract for lateral - civil engineering - works, designed and supervised by an Engineer to one required to meet the needs of a vertical structure, which is "designed, built and fitted-out" by a Contractor (a turnkey contract) where the Engineer is required to supervise (not design) those Works. The present thesis is concerned with a discussion of problems related to the open-endedness of building contracts, in the context of "Botched" FIDIC contracts: which, in the event, have become virtually unmanageable (from an administrative point-of-view) and the generic FIDIC "slant" has all but destroyed the efficacy of turnkey design and build contracts.