Early Warning of NEC3 ECC, A Solution for Dutch Design and Build Construction Problem Solving?

Abstract

The integrated contract UAV-GC 2005 is gaining popularities in Dutch construction industry, which is meant to bring added value to the employer. Nevertheless, due to embedded culture and other social factors, people are still strongly influenced by the ‘old way of working’. For instance, project problems between employer and contractor are often settled too late, which leads to excessive amount of costs. As a result, parties begin to blame each other, and vicious cycle starts. From a legal point of view, it is deemed that the duty to warn obligation of UAV-GC 2005 does not necessarily play its role in facilitating problem solving between the employer and the contractor. While in an international level, the early warning of NEC3 ECC originated from U.K. construction industry is catching increasingly attention all over the world, which is known as its ‘proactive risk management’ approach in dealing with project problems. Under early warning obligation, parties are obliged to inform each other of any matter which could affect costs, completion, progress or quality of the project. It is even praised as ‘jewel in the crown’ by many. Therefore, it is inspired that whether the duty to warn of UAV-GC 2005 can be “substituted” by the early warning of NEC3 ECC, so as to improve problem solving on Dutch Design and build construction projects. Nevertheless, the NEC3 ECC contract has not been extensively applied in the Dutch construction industry, so that it is both legally and culturally alien to the “Dutch approach”. Therefore, problem in this respect is twofold, which is the deficiencies of the duty to warn of UAV-GC 2005 on one hand while the unfamiliarity of the early warning of NEC3 ECC to the Dutch construction industry on the other. Accordingly, the primary research objective of this dissertation is to investigate the deficiencies of duty to warn of UAV-GC 2005 and the added value of early warning of NEC3 ECC in terms of facilitating construction problem solving between the employer and the contractor. The secondary objective is to probe into the requirements for early warning to function with its genuine intention, from both contractual and cultural perspectives...