Construction Contract Management & Claims: FIDIC Red Book

Your claim notice under Sub-Clause 20.1 is one day late. What have you just lost?

Under the FIDIC Red Book 1999 — everything. Not a reduction. Not a discount. The entitlement is gone, and a claim that was strong on the merits dies on a date.

That single sentence is why contracts professionals who genuinely know FIDIC are paid what they are paid. And it is why I built this course.

What this course covers

This is a complete journey — from the fundamentals of construction contracting, through the FIDIC suite and the Golden Principles, and then clause by clause through every clause of the FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction, First Edition 1999 — the Red Book — from Clause 1 to Clause 20. Nothing skipped. Nothing compressed into a bullet point that helps nobody.

First, the ground you need before FIDIC makes sense

• Types of contract by pricing method — lump sum, remeasurement, cost plus — and what each one actually does to the allocation of risk between the Parties.
• The FIDIC suite of contracts — which form belongs to which procurement route, how the Conditions are structured, and how the responsibilities of the Employer, the Engineer and the Contractor are allocated across them.
• The FIDIC Golden Principles — the ethics and values the whole system rests on, and what goes wrong when Particular Conditions are drafted against them.

Then we open the Red Book and work through all twenty clauses

• Clauses 1 to 6 — the Contract documents and their order of priority, the Employer’s obligations, the Engineer’s authority and the real limits on it, the Contractor’s general obligations, Nominated Subcontractors, and Staff and Labour.
• Clauses 7 to 11 — Plant, Materials and workmanship; commencement, programme, delays, extension of the Time for Completion, delay damages and suspension; Tests on Completion; the Employer’s taking over; and the Defects Notification Period.
• Clauses 12 to 14 — measurement and evaluation; Variations, Provisional Sums and adjustments for changes in legislation and cost; and the entire payment cycle from advance payment through Interim Payment Certificates and retention to the Final Payment Certificate, including the Contractor’s remedies when the Employer does not pay.
• Clauses 15 to 19 — termination by the Employer, suspension and termination by the Contractor, the allocation of risk and the indemnities, the insurance obligations, and Force Majeure.
• Clause 20 — the claim notice and the time bar, the Engineer’s determination, the Dispute Adjudication Board, amicable settlement, and arbitration.

And then you get tested. The final lecture is twenty questions across the twenty clauses, with the answers and the Sub-Clause behind every single one. Most people get at least three wrong — and it is always the same three.

What makes this course different from every other FIDIC course

Almost every FIDIC course tells you what the clause says. That is the easy half, and you could get it from reading the book yourself.

The hard half — the half that costs projects millions — is knowing the difference between:

• what is explicitly written in the Conditions of Contract;
• what is a reasonable interpretation that an Engineer or a tribunal would follow; and
• what is merely common industry practice, with no contractual backing at all.

Most people who have worked under FIDIC for years cannot reliably tell those three apart. They walk into a claim meeting quoting a right the Contract never gave them, and they lose the room in thirty seconds.

In this course, those three registers are separated out loud, every single time. When I tell you there is an entitlement, I tell you which Sub-Clause creates it. When something is only practice, I say so plainly. You will never again confuse “this is what we always do” with “this is what the Contract says.”

A claims lens on every clause

Every clause is taught through the question that decides commercial outcomes: where does this generate a claim? Each clause closes with three named claim flashpoints — the specific points where that clause actually fails on real projects — and a practical checklist you can apply on Monday morning.

One thread runs the whole length of the Conditions that most courses never make explicit: which entitlements carry Cost plus reasonable profit, and which carry Cost only. Sub-Clauses 7.4, 10.2, 10.3 and 16.1 give you profit. Sub-Clauses 8.9, 13.7, 17.4 and 19.4 do not. Knowing that cold is the difference between a claim priced correctly and a claim taken apart line by line across the table.

Balanced — because the professional who can argue the other side is the one who wins

This course is not written for the Contractor, and it is not written for the Employer. Every clause is presented from all three seats: Employer, Engineer and Contractor. You will understand why the Engineer determines the way he does, what the Employer is protecting, and where the Contractor’s real exposure sits. That is what lets you anticipate the other party’s argument before it is made — and that is where negotiations are won.

Twenty years of practice, not twenty years of theory

I have spent over twenty years administering these Conditions on live projects, and that experience runs through every lecture — the arguments that work, the ones that never do, and the mistakes that are made on the same clauses over and over again.

What you get

• Every clause of the FIDIC Red Book 1999, Clause 1 through Clause 20
• The contracting fundamentals and the FIDIC suite that come before it
• Clear professional slides you can keep as a working reference
• English subtitles on every lecture
• Claim flashpoints and a practical checklist throughout
• A final test lecture with full answers and Sub-Clause references
• Lifetime access on any device, and a certificate of completion

Who this course is for

Contracts Managers, Contract Administrators, Quantity Surveyors, Commercial Managers, Claims Consultants, Planning Engineers, Project Managers, Project Directors, Resident Engineers, Procurement Managers and Technical Office Managers — and anyone who signs, administers, argues about or is exposed to a FIDIC contract, whatever the title on the business card says.

Requirements

No prior FIDIC knowledge is assumed. Construction industry experience, or a serious interest in construction contracts, is all you need. A copy of the FIDIC Red Book 1999 is useful alongside the course but is not required — every clause is explained in full, in plain professional English, without reproducing FIDIC’s copyrighted text.

#Professional_Contracts_Manager #FIDIC_Practitioner

Enrol now. You are one clause away from being the person in the room who actually knows. Start with Clause 1.

Portions of this course use AI-assisted narration and visuals. All content is written, structured, reviewed and verified by the instructor.