The International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) has secured a major agreement with the World Bank that will see the international funding organisation adopt the use of six FIDIC standard contracts for the next five years
Under the terms of the agreement, FIDIC has granted the World Bank a non-exclusive licence to refer to the six major FIDIC contracts for projects they finance and the documents will be used as part of the bank’s standard bidding documents.
The contracts mainly include the 2017 Second edition FIDIC contracts, which cover a wide range of international construction and infrastructure work, and the World Bank’s move represents a major endorsement for the contracts from a major international funding organisation. FIDIC also expects to announce a similar agreement with the other multilateral development banks.
FIDIC chief executive, Dr Nelson Ogunshakin commented: “Endorsement by the World Bank should provide additional comfort to the financial, institutional and private equity investors operating in the global market to adopt the use of FIDIC standard procurement contracts as an effective tool to mitigate the risk associated with investable infrastructure asset class.
“Over the coming months, we will be working with our member associations and strategic partners to ensure that the FIDIC 2017 contract editions are translated into five major languages – Arabic, Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish – to aid effective use across the World Bank and other multilateral development banks’ operating countries.”
Enzo De Laurentiis, chief procurement officer at the World Bank said: “We are very pleased to continue to build on our long collaboration with FIDIC by adopting the standard conditions of contracts in the 2017 suite for use in projects financed by the World Bank, as appropriate and complemented by our Conditions of Particular Application (COPA).
“Together, the 2017 FIDIC standard conditions and our COPA, will ensure that infrastructure contracts financed by the World Bank continue to be based on an internationally recognised standard and reflect key aspects of our policies and practice related, among others, to managing environmental, social and integrity risks.”
FIDIC president Alain Bentéjac added “This move by the World Bank represents major international market buy-in for our FIDIC 2017 Second edition contracts and one that we hope will also influence the supply chain to adopt FIDIC contracts thereby creating even more certainty in the planning and delivery of major international construction and infrastructure projects. We look forward to continuing our strong partnership with the World Bank and the other multilateral development banks (MDBs) over the coming years.”
