Monday, August 26, 2019

Do you understand what exactly the "Site" is, as per Fidic Red Book?

The word “Site” has been defined as follows within the four versions of Fidic Red Book:

1977 Version
means the land and other places on, under, in or through which the Permanent Works or Temporary Works designed by the Engineer are to be executed and any other lands and places provided by the Employer for working space or any other purpose as may be specifically designated in the Contract as forming part of the Site.

1987 Version
means the places provided by the Employer where the Works are to be executed and any other places specified in the Contract as forming part of the Site.

1999 Version
means the places where the Permanent Works are to be executed and to which Plant and Materials are to be delivered, and any other places as may be specified in the Contract as forming part of the Site.

2017 Version
means the places where the Permanent Works are to be executed and to which Plant and Materials are to be delivered, and any other places specified in the Contract as forming part of the Site.

The 1977 version has made an unsuccessful attempt to define the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the Site. The prepositions used to relate the boundaries of the site are on, under in and through, wherein the English language has got a wider spectrum of prepositions such as across, around, over and past which were missing from this definition. For instance, one would argue that if it is a tunneling project, usage of the preposition “through the tunnel” would be appropriate but it may not be the case for a bridge project wherein the more appropriate term would be “across the bridge”. The 1987 version refrained from using any prepositions to define such boundaries of the Site and simply adopted the term as “places where the Works are to be executed”. This practice has been continued within both the 1999 version and the 2017 version.
Both the 1977 version and the 1987 version include Works which comprises of both the Permanent Works and the Temporary Works to define the boundaries of the word Site. However the 1999 version and 2017 version exclude the Temporary Works and the new definition of Site includes only the Permanent Works.
Throughout all the four versions the Employer has been given the liberty to define “any other places” as part of the Site. This is an important inclusion as there may be places which are essential to be defined as part of the site depending on the nature of the project. For instance, Employer may opt to define a prefabrication yard as part of the Site.




2 comments: