International Construction Contracts and the FIDIC Red Book: A New Important Commentary

• Date: 01 January 2023
• Author: By Christopher Seppala

Published in The Construction Lawyer Volume 43, Number 1, ©2024 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with

permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any

means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

Forum on Construction LawThe Construction Lawyer Volume 43, Number 1

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International Construction Contracts and the

FIDIC Red Book: A New Important Commentary By

Christopher Seppala

By Philip L. Bruner

Philip L. Bruner, pbruner@jamsadr.com, is the co-author, with Patrick J. O’Conner, of Bruner and

O’Connor on Construction Law, and received the 2005 Cornerstone Award of the Forum on Construction

Law. He is an arbitrator and mediator and the director of the JAMS Global Engineering and Construction

Panel of Neutrals. (See his CV at www.jamsadr.com.)

American lawyers representing clients in international construction disputes under contract terms

referencing the FIDIC Red Book should acquaint themselves promptly with the newly published The

FIDIC Red Book Contract: An International Clause-by-Clause Commentary (Wolters Kluwer 2023). The

FIDIC Red Book currently is the world’s most widely used set of international construction contract terms

and conditions.

This comprehensive book is authored in its entirety by the distinguished Parisian lawyer Christopher R.

Seppala, who is one of the world’s leading experts on FIDIC contracts through his service for more than

30 years as legal adviser to the FIDIC Contracts Committee of the International Federation of Consulting

Engineers (known by its French acronym FIDIC). Mr. Seppala also brings his own international

background to his work, having been born and schooled in England, educated at Harvard College

and Columbia Law School, and admitted to the New York and Parisian Bars. In 1988 he founded the

international arbitration practice of the Paris office of White and Case and since then has devoted his

career to contract dispute resolution.

Throughout the 1414 pages of his heavily footnoted book, Mr. Seppala not only provides a detailed

analysis of each clause of the FIDIC Red Book as updated in 2022, but offers commentary on a host of

other subjects important to gaining a more complete understanding of the FIDIC Red Book, such as:

(1) the history of the FIDIC Red Book from its English origins and language modeled upon the

conditions of contract promulgated by the United Kingdom’s Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE);

(2) the many universal legal principles applicable to construction contracts, starting with a com-

parison of principles based on distinctive features of common law (primarily UK and commonwealth

countries) and civil law, together with the 2016 UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial

Contracts (of which he was a member of the working group). His analysis includes key concepts,

such as the duty of good faith, duty of disclosure, defense of non-performance (similar to the US’s

“rst material breach” doctrine), notice of default, contract termination, liquidated damages, force

majeure and hardship, limitation of damages, trade usages, and others;

(3) the common law and civil law approaches to contract legal interpretation; and

(4) dispute resolution of international construction disputes under FIDIC’s prescribed Dispute

Avoidance/Adjudication Board (DAAB).