Advocating equally balanced international conditions of contract

European international contractors in general agree that the FIDIC conditions of contract have been and still are important for facilitating the tendering for and negotiating of international construction contracts. Due to their customary balance of risks and responsibilities, the FIDIC conditions have therefore become the baseline conditions for a fair international construction contract. In fact, the major underlying trend in international construction projects today is obviously the move from traditional employer-provided design with re-measurable price to design-build with lump-sum prices. A driving force behind this trend is the transition from publicly financed to privately financed infrastructure. The limited recourse financing in BOT projects is considered to require an all-encompassing undertaking from the contractor. In general, contractors are ready and willing to work on a turnkey basis and for many major firms this is often their preferred way of working, provided that the risks involved can be identified, assessed, priced and managed. But, the risk-allocation in a FIDIC standard Form of Contract should not go that far that it violates the basic principle of "good faith". If the contractor is seriously asked to price risks hat are unforeseeable, that is detrimental to the project because either the contract price will be unnecessarily high or the contractor is forced into a "gambling situation".

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