INVESTIGATING SITE-RELATED NOTICES IN CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTS

Notices issued under the construction contract serve several purposes, the most significant of which is to facilitate the progression of the works. This is done through establishing necessary communications among the project participants by acting in accordance with the callings of the contract conditions. Through an in-depth examination of the notices stipulated under the standard conditions for the construction contract issued by the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC), it was found that 43 out of 93 encountered notices deal with issues related to activities taking place on the construction site. The purpose of this paper is to present a detailed analysis of these notices and highlight their operability properties. The analysis focuses on the various characteristics pertaining to this vital group of notices, namely: their types, the participants involved in their administration, their related time bars, and the concerned aspects of the site activities. Results of the performed analysis are twofold: (1) the majority of these notices are found to be of the structured (complex composition) type; and (2) the contractor has the larger share in triggering their associated sub-clauses, and to do so, for the majority of these notices, within numerically stipulated time bars. The main contribution of the presented work is in providing a focused reference that can help contract administration practitioners, dealing with site-related matters, improve the current state of practice.