Models for the Administration of Structured Construction Contract Notices

An important aspect of the conditions of a construction contract relates to notices—that is, the obligation of a party to notify the other party (and/or the engineer), in conjunction with the right of the other party to be notified, concerning either events that regulate the processes used for accomplishing the works or occurrences that arise during the course of construction. The triggering of such notice provisions can be associated with any combination of events, prerequisite events, and/or regulated time periods, thereby making the majority of notices highly structured. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the notices’ numerically stated time bars to help reveal their associated underlying considerations. It discusses nineteen models conceived following the methodological construction of a notices classification matrix to be representative of the various process structures applicable to notices’ interconnected multiple requirements, as inferred from the standard conditions for the construction contract issued by the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC). This is followed by a thorough discussion of the identified condition-precedent notices known to be of particular significance by contract administration practitioners as they relate to waiver-of-right contractual risks.