From the Editors – Construction Law International – June 2024

Dear readers,

We are delighted to introduce the June issue of Construction Law International (CLInt). This issue comes shortly after the hugely successful ICP working weekend in Oxford at the end of April. We hope to include reports on the sessions during this working weekend in the next issue of CLInt.

As a prelude, we would like to mention Oscar Aitken’s highly memorable and graphic comparison of a construction contract and a gorilla in a cage. Like the cage the contract should not be so strict or small that the gorilla does not have space to move. On the other hand, the cage should not be so large or the contract so lax that the gorilla has too much freedom. The bars of the cage, like the terms of the contract should be strong. And, of course, one must be weary of letting the gorilla out of the cage, or the contractor out of the bounds of the contract.

This issue continues our FIDIC around the world series with contributions from Nigeria and Rwanda. We also have updates from England and India. Our feature articles in this issue cover a wide range of topics, including project financing and risk allocation in Nigeria, a look at Saudi Arabia’s new Civil Transactions Law and the provocatively entitled ‘Junk science: the fallacy of retrospective time impact analysis’. Apart from this, we have an interesting article on managing risks in nuclear construction projects.

We hope you enjoy reading the June issue and look forward to seeing you at the IBA Annual Conference in Mexico City in September!

We thank our contributors for sharing their experience and insights. As always, we encourage all International Construction Projects Committee members to contribute to CLInt by submitting articles to Thayananthan Baskaran at thaya@baskaranlaw.com.

¡Hasta luego!

Thayananthan Baskaran
Committee Editor, IBA International Construction Projects Committee
Baskaran, Kuala Lumpur
thaya@baskaranlaw.com

Eric Franco
Deputy Committee Editor, IBA International Construction Projects Committee
Legal Delta, Lima
eric.franco@legaldelta.com