ABSTRACT
The history of the New Engineering Contract (NEC) stems from 1985, when the Council of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) approved a recommendation from its Legal Affairs Committee "to lead a fundamental review of alternative contract strategies for civil engineering design and construction with the objective of identifying the needs for good practice". In July 1994, Sir Michael Latham's report "Constructing the Team" recommended that the NEC should be adopted by Clients in the private and public sectors and suggested that it should become a national standard contract across the whole of engineering and construction work generally. The original objectives of the NEC contracts, and more specifically the Engineering and Construction Contract (ECC), were to make improvements under three headings: flexibility, clarity and simplicity. The Preface to the NEC4 ECC states that the key objectives in drafting NEC4 contracts were: to provide greater stimulus to good management and to inspire increased use of NEC in new markets and sectors.
