| Termination for convenience clauses is originated from the Anglo-American Legal System and then transplanted into conditions of FIDIC contract.In the FIDIC contract,termination for employer’s convenience is regarded as a special agreement to terminate the contract.The limitation of contract termination by the employer and the scope of compensation to the contractor after the contract are the core content of the termination for convenience clauses.The termination application conditions and the payment obligations for contractors are different from termination without any reason in the continent law system like China.In the conditions of FIDIC contract,the reasons of termination for employer’s convenience are not arbitrary.The project owners shall not continue to carry out the project on their own after the contract is canceled or handed over to a third party to resume the involved project,and the termination shall be subject to the principles of good faith.The payment for the contractor after terminating is limited to the actual value of the completed project and the actual loss such as staff repatriation caused by termination,while the loss of contractor’s expected profit caused by the unfulfilled part of the contract is excluded.The design of termination for employer’s convenience clauses in the FIDIC contract meets the demands of international engineering projects.In the 2017 version of FIDIC contract newly revised,the restrictions of termination for convenience are softened.In the meantime,the loss of contractor’s expected profit caused by the unfulfilled part of the contract are also recoverable by the Employer under the new version.The revision blurred the boundary between the termination for employer’s convenience and termination for employer’s repudiatory termination.In the view of project owners’ unmovable rights to choose the templates of contracts in the international construction market,it has to be verified whether the amendments in2017 version can be accepted by project owners as well as the international engineering construction market and become a new rule in termination for employer’s convenience in international engineering contracting.Chinese enterprises engaged in international construction projects have to fully understand the impact of the particularity of termination for employer’s convenience under FIDIC contract conditions,especially the applicable conditions and restrictions,the impact of the good faith principle on termination for employer’s convenience,and the scope of compensation,to prevent risks in participating in the construction of international engineering projects and promote the implementation of the “Belt and Road” project. |
