28 Construction contracts

using the Model Adjudication Procedures of the Construction Industry Council. There is also an arbitration agreement.

2.7.4Other standard agreements

The NEC Professional Services Contract is structured according to the headings of the Engineering and Construction Contract, and does not seem to contain any clauses that impose obligations and rights that are very different from those already discussed. The headings are:

General: Including an obligation to act in a spirit of mutual trust and cooperation.

Parties’ main responsibilities: Similar obligations to RIBA Standard Agreement 2010 for both parties.

Time: Including more detail than other forms as to the content and status of the consultants’ programme, as well as authority for the client to decide the date of completion and certify it within a week of it happening.

Quality: Including an obligation on the consultant to operate a quality management system and to correct defects identified by the client.

Payment: Broadly in line with RIBA Standard Agreement 2010.

Compensation events: The provisions under this clause bear more resemblance to provisions in building contracts than those usually found in professional services agreements, and thus are more detailed than similar provisions in RIBA Standard Agreement 2010.

Rights to material: This seems to attribute rights and obligations similar to those in RIBA Standard Agreement 2010 that grant a licence to the client to use the consultant’s material and impose confidentiality restrictions on both parties.

Indemnity, insurance and liability: The consultants’ liability seems less restricted than that in RIBA Standard Agreement 2010, otherwise, these provision are broadly similar.

Termination: The termination provisions are broadly in line with RIBA Standard Agreement 2010.

2.8INTEGRATED DOCUMENTATION

A big problem that historically faced professional institutions in preparing professional services agreements was the tension between fulfilling demands to develop co-ordinated documentation for the whole team on the one hand, and protecting the interests of their members on the other. While major developer clients often provide their own documents for consultants to use, practice in the industry is increasingly consistent, with the major contract-drafting bodies producing integrated suites of harmonized contracts and agreements for all parties in the project team. The New Engineering Contract package of documentation (in which the building contract is called the Engineering and Construction Contract) provides a fully integrated set of documentation, this being one of the reasons that the Latham Report (1994) recommended the universal adoption of these forms for

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the industry. The conditions of engagement are referred to as the NEC3 Professional Services Contract (Institution of Civil Engineers 2005d). In a similar vein, the Joint Contracts Tribunal produce a full range of contracts and agreements that are fully integrated with each other.

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