Planning advice for contractors

A UK Tier 2 contractor with a strong NEC track record won its first major FIDIC contract and was in dispute eighteen months later. A UK contractor with extensive FIDIC experience won an NEC4 contract and had the project manager invoking clause 64 within six months. Both failures had the same underlying cause: contractors who switch between NEC and FIDIC without recognising that the two contracts reward fundamentally different organisational capabilities. This is the editorial

Social value commitments in UK construction tenders come in two distinct categories under the Procurement Act 2023 regime. Decorative social value (community events, charitable contributions, generic diversity statements) used to score because the regime did not distinguish between categories. It no longer does.

UK adjudication data records 2,264 referrals between May 2023 and April 2024, with inadequate contract administration identified as the leading cause of disputes at 50 per cent of cases. Behind that figure sits a pattern most experienced commercial directors recognise. Contractors with weak NEC4 programme compliance lose disproportionately on change assessment, on delay narratives, on cashflow timing, and on tender evaluation. The losses are not random.