Printed from the ArchiMentor Knowledge pages on - www.archimentor.net

Building Contracts

• Introduction
• Further reading

Introduction

It is impossible to cover the vast complexity of UK building contracts on a simple website page. It is also unlikely that the architect will have to accept the sole responsibility for recommending the most suitable form of contract, except on the very smallest contracts. The intention of this page is solely to provide the most basic information as the starting point for more serious research.

There are three major variables to be considered when reducing the hundreds of available contract forms to a shortlist for serious consideration. They are:

• Procurement method - This establishes the essential contractual relationships between the various parties to the contract. Read more about Contract Procurement.
• Publisher - This determines the style of the contractual relationships (some are more adversarial, some are more consensual). Read more about the Contract Publishers.
• Contract size - All the major publishers provide different versions of their contract forms for different sizes of contracts. There no hard-and-fast rules as to which version to use for a given contract value and all publishers emphasise that cost and complexity should be considered together when deciding on the appropriate contract form.

The table below shows the essential relationships between these three variables, with links to other ArchiMentor Knowledge pages dealing with individual issues in more depth.

PROCUREMENT METHOD	Management	Traditional	Design and Build
Control of Cost	Not so good	Good	Good
Control of Time	Good	Not so good	Good
Control of Quality	Good	Good	Not so good
Balance of Risk	Towards Client	Balanced	Towards Contractor
CONTRACT SIZE	Standard Contract Forms available from the following Contract Publishers:
Very Large	JCT + SBCC NEC/ECC	JCT + SBCC NEC/ECC	-
Large	JCT + SBCC NEC/ECC	JCT + SBCC NEC/ECC GC/Works	JCT + SBCC NEC/ECC GC/Works
Medium	-	JCT NEC/ECC GC/Works ACA	JCT NEC/ECC GC/Works
Small	-	JCT + SBCC NEC/ECC GC/Works	JCT + SBCC
Very Small	-	JCT + SBCC	JCT + SBCC

Further reading

• NBS Website. Pages on the NBS website.
• Resources > Useful links > ... > Contracts
• Topic areas > ... > Articles > Advising clients on the appropriate form of building contracts
• Topic areas > ... > Articles > Tendering – getting what you wished for
• Topic areas > ... > Articles > Which procurement method?
• RIBA Enterprises. Which Contract?. Fourth Edition. 360 pages. Published 2007.
  This excellent book, subtitled "Choosing the appropriate building contract", is the still the definitive publication on the subject and is one of our recommendations for the Core Library. For more information, see this RIBA Bookshops page.

© 2008-11. ArchiMentor.