ABSTRACT
There is no construction without a contract. The drawing up of effective construction contracts has been developed towards a significant discipline within the construction industry. As construction projects become ever more complex, their contracts need more attention, which results in a steady increase in the number of pages over the years. The days with a contract of just several pages with a few attachments are gone, probably forever. Particularly if dealing with ground, transparent contracts with clear responsibilities for the parties involved are usually highly valued. Because of the inherent ground uncertainty with fuzzy, random and incomplete information, transparent ground-related contracting faces major challenges. During the contracting phase, the client or owner selects a suitable contractor to
realize the project. Contracting can take place in several phases of the project, for instance after the feasibility phase, the pre-design phase or the design phase. In this book the latter situation has been worked out, because this Design-Bid-Build (DBB) type of contract still represents the actual situation in many construction projects worldwide. For instance, the North American tunnelling industry applies DBB contracts for the majority of projects (Essex, 2003). In this book the DBB contracting approach is mentioned as the conventional way of contracting. There is an increasing trend, however, to involve the contractor earlier in the process of the construction project, after completion of the pre-design phase or even just after the feasibility phase. This type of Design & Construct (D&C) or DesignBuild (DB) is considered a modern contract in this book. If maintenance also has been included, for instance during a 10-year or 20-year period after completion of construction, we reach the so-called Design-Build-Maintenance (DBM) sort of
and
contract. Outsourcing the financing of the project to the contractor as well gives a Design-Build-Finance-Maintenance (DBFM) contract. Figure 11.1 shows the GeoQ ground risk management process to be well applicable to all of these contract types.
