Construction Management Guide

by Joanne Clarke

In a judgment dated February 25, 2009 (Cour de cassation, civ. 3, 25 February 2009, No. P07-20.096), the Court of cassation, the highest court in the French judiciary, confirmed its previous decisions (Cour de cassation, chambre mixte, 30 November 2007, No. 06-14.006; Cour de cassation, 3e civ., 30 January 2008, No. 06-14.641) according to which certain provisions of the French Law on Subcontracting dated December 31, 1975 are mandatory, and as such are to be applied even when French law is not the governing law chosen by the parties to the contract. [Read more…]

Not everyone believes in project managers. Some common complaints include:

• They focus on planning and processes, and in the end, don’t produce anything of value.
• They speak using business and project management double-talk, and produce only papers, charts,
  graphs, analysis, etc, to justify why no actual product was going into production.
• They have a lack of real experience in the subject area, and they do not know how to actually build a final deliverable. [Read more…]

By Edward Sunna

What You Need To Know and Why?
The private sector in the UAE and more recently the public sector in Abu Dhabi, have adopted FIDIC or at least a hybrid version of FIDIC for government use. This was done in part to reduce the risk of international contracting, but more importantly, to standardise terms of engagement to reduce uncertainty caused by the application and interplay of Federal Laws and the various Laws of the Emirates, in so far as they are applicable to construction contracts.

[Read more…]

by Sachin Kerur

Despite the challenging world economic conditions, the Gulf looks set to remain one of the most significant global construction markets.

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 By Christopher R. Seppala

I propose briefly to discuss five topics in the three new Books for major works (the new Construction Contract, the Plant Contract and the EPC Contract), as follows:

 (1) Contractor’s risk and “Employer’s Risks”,

(2) Indemnities,

(3) Limitation of Liability,

(4) The New Force Majeure Clause, and

(5) Grounds and Procedure for Termination of the Contract by the Employer and the Contractor. [Read more…]

by Karen Gough

We are in the midst of a world-wide recession. So, in times when contractors’ liquidity and therefore their very survival is more at risk than usual, and employers are more than usually jittery about the ability of contractors to complete works, a recent decision on a claim to enforce an advance payment guarantee and a performance bonds is of particular interest to construction law practitioners. [Read more…]

by Martin Harman

I have just returned from a family holiday in India, our first visit together although I am a frequent business traveller there. Apart from the beauty and vibrancy of the country and its people, what struck me most was that when travelling on business one is so very removed from the real life of the people of the country. I spend a large part of my time working as an international legal counsel to Indian law firms and Indian corporates who are at the forefront of the delivery of India’s infrastructure vision, a vision that requires, as just one example, the delivery of 20 kilometres of road every day over the next few years. For the business traveller, whose main transport experience is a journey from hotel to office, the scale of the infrastructure deficit begins to come into focus but as a tourist traveller, it looms extremely large. [Read more…]

by Sarah Thomas

I am a contractor working on a wastewater project in Eastern Europe, using the FIDIC Yellow Book –Design & Build. Vol.3 of our contract contains the following clause:

[Read more…]

by George Burn

Post prepared by Karina Chichkanova (Partner, Head of Salans’ St. Petersburg Real Estate Group) and Galina Pashkovskaya (Associate)

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