FIDIC publishes General Conditions (GCs) of Contract that are widely used for international construction contracts. They are intended to be used in any jurisdiction.
The brand of FIDIC, amongst other things, represents fair, balanced and well recognised forms of construction and engineering contract and agreement forms. FIDIC GCs are based on fair and balanced risk/reward allocation between the Employer and the Contractor and are widely recognised as striking an appropriate balance between the reasonable expectations of these contracting Parties. Accordingly, a contract recognised as a FIDIC Contract has real commercial value to both the Employer and the Contractor, both at the tendering stage, and during execution of the Contract.
More and more frequently, FIDIC now experiences applications of “FIDIC contracts”, where significant changes to the General Conditions are made by means of replacing, changing or omitting part of the wording of the GCs through the Particular Conditions (PCs). The replacements and changes introduced have lately been found to be substantial and of such extent, that the final contract no longer represents the FIDIC principles, and thus are jeopardising the “FIDIC brand”, and misleading tenderers and the public.
On FIDIC’s request, the Contracts Committee set up a special Task Group (TG15) in order to identify which contractual principles of each form of FIDIC contract FIDIC considers to be inviolable and sacrosanct. These principles are referred to as the “FIDIC Golden Principles” (GPs).TG15 was also requested to consider and suggest possible ways to prevent, or at least limit, misuses of FIDIC conditions of contracts.