Complex Construction Contracts: Who Needs Them? Who Benefits?

Michael Craik and Ben Patten

May 2007

Two linked papers given to a meeting of the Society of Construction Law in London on 7th November 2006.

How is it that construction contracts have grown ever more complex? Michael Craik and Ben Patten offer explanations for this trend, identifying contributions from the judges in their approaches to implying terms into contracts and from Parliament through well-meaning but unhelpful statutory intervention, including the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 and Housing Grants, Construction and egeneration Act 1996. The drafters of standard forms are also to blame, they suggest, even the 'new age' forms and the 'fresh start' contracts like the New Engineering Contract. And the development of construction law as a subject and a specialist field has, they suggest, encouraged this trend. Lawyers undoubtedly benefit from this complexity, but do other players in the field gain too?

PAT A: Who needs complex construction contracts? - Introduction - State-sponsored intervention - Implied terms - State intervention I: the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 - State intervention II: the Contracts (ights of Third Parties) Act 1999 - State intervention III: the HGCA 1996 - The judicial 're-writing' of contracts - ules of construction - The 'contractual matrix' - Entire agreement clauses - 'New age' standard form contracts - Forms of procurement - 'A plea for sanity' - The adjudicator - Conclusion - PAT B: Who benefits from complex construction contracts? - Introduction - Example 1: the NEC and compensation events - Example 2: The IBA forms for engagement for architects - Conclusions.

The authors: Michael Craik is a partner of Martineau Johnson, solicitors and Ben patten is a barrister at Four New Square, Lincoln's Inn.

Text 24 pages.

PDF file size: 252k