Ms Orla Hegarty:

The Government construction contracts committee, GCCC, reformed public procurement in construction around 2004 to 2007 and moved to a policy decision away from what had been there previously to cost certainty over value for money. It has a set of contracts that are public works contracts, PWC. It would be fair to say they are not very popular in industry for any number of reasons, including risk transfer and the fact they are lowest cost bids, in many cases, and tend to result in much adversity and dispute over variations.

Other alternatives are available. The Fédération Internationale des Ingénieurs-Conseil, FIDIC, contract was mentioned. That is an international engineering contract that is used extensively worldwide and has its own precedents for resolving disputes and the detail on those. New engineering contracts, NEC, are also in use in the UK and, increasingly, collaborative contracts that specifically move away from this adversarial claims culture are available now. It would be extraordinarily helpful if we could move in that direction in construction procurement here because it would de-risk the process for the contractors. It would give a better mechanism for resolving disputes and variations. Generally all round, it would get better prices and give more certainty over time for both sides in the equation.