Claim And Contract Management Study Of FIDIC Conditions In Trincomalee Integrated Infrastructure Project

The infrastructure development in China brought the Chinese construction companies historical opportunity in the past thirty years. Some of these companies even have already been among the best of the international construction companies. As domestic infrastructure development proceed, the domestic construction projects have already become saturate which cannot meet with the developmental needs of large construction companies. Compared to other international contractors of developed countries who have focused its main business on overseas, the foreign operations of Chinese construction enterprises are still insignificant volume even though the overseas business has launched and improved under the government strategy of "overseas development". What’s more, the overseas market should play an important role in future development of Chinese construction enterprises. But Chinese construction enterprises only occupy small portion in the big international construction market. In the process of overseas development, some cases display the inadaption of international market because Chinese enterprises are unfamiliar with the international conventions and rules which include the FIDIC conditions used as the main contract documents in widespread use and also they don’t know how to use contract management to reduce or avoid the risk.FIDIC is the French acronym of International Federation of Consultant Engineers. The Federation developed gradually over the years into a truly global organization with member associations representing countries from all regions of the world since its foundation in1913. Today, FIDIC membership has covered97countries of the world. Over the years, FIDIC has become famous for its activity of producing standard form contracts for the construction and engineering industry. FIDIC general conditions of contract are complete, rigorous and fair, consisting of legal, technical, and economic provisions.Claim management is one of the most important parts in international project management because it is not only the specific embodiment of engineering comprehensive management capability, but also is a necessary way for employer and contractor to protect their profit and retrieve loss. It is indicated by some statistical data that claim can bring about more than a billion dollars for civil engineering per year. Therefore, identifying and seizing claim opportunity imply huge economic benefit.This article gives its analysis and viewpoint on the floods claim case happened on Trincomalee Integrated Infrastructure Project in Sri Lanka in earlier of2011in various aspects including analyzing contract basis, collecting the claim supporting documents, dealing with all kinds of issues suffered from the different objects and finding out the countermeasure. According to the tough problems involved in the long period of claims and relevant solution, the article summarizes the Contractor’s experience and shortages and gives some suggestions on how to improve the abilities of international project risks managements, especially on how to prepare high effective claim documents. The claim documents in this case have obtained the high appraisal from the Lost Adjustor in Sri Lanka "This is the best claim documents I have ever read in the past years".