FIDIC – Proactively Preserving The Contractual Relationship

The FIDIC suite of contracts has gone through extreme lengths to equip construction contractual parties with the tools to not only resolve disputes, but as far as possible to avoid disputes and preserve the contractual relationship between them.

Not only has FIDIC paved out a roadmap for parties in the form om a two-tier process to follow as a pre-condition to referring disputes to arbitration, it has also made these clauses in its contracts a golden principle which means that parties may not alter these provisions to bypass the two-tier process and refer the dispute directly to arbitration. The view is taken that not only is effective dispute resolution important for future contractual relationships in the construction industry, but dispute avoidance is a further attempt to better preserve the contractual relationship between parties and smooth out the bumps that an arbitration cannot.