Standard form construction contracts; why the need for regular changes?

Publications of the Joint Building Contracts Committee¨ (JBCC¨) are revised periodically to comply with changing statutory and industry requirements in the interests of standardisation and good practice with an equitable distribution of contractual risk. The latest JBCC¨ edition was published in March 2014. This paper will highlight the changes that were made in this edition with reasons why such changes were deemed necessary, and, in addition, will look at changes that were recently made to other selected local and international standard forms of construction contracts. The related JBCC¨ documents have consequently been revised. This include the various JBCC¨ payment certificate forms, the JBCC¨ security forms and the JBCC¨ completion certificate forms. The Association of South African Quantity Surveyors has revised the ÔPreliminariesÕ and has prepared a Model Bill of Quantities Preliminaries trade incorporating the new JBCC¨ edition 6.1. The Adjudication Rules have also been updated in consultation with the Association of Arbitrators of Southern Africa and the Construction Adjudication Association of South Africa. The content of standard forms of construction contracts and the respective industry model documentation used in South Africa and elsewhere, portray the consensus view of constituent bodies representing building owners and developers, professional consultants, and general and specialist contractors which are aimed at bringing about uniformity in construction procurement documentation. The discussion in this paper is about the question why regular changes are necessary to these standard forms of construction contracts. The discussion will be limited to building contracts with the design provided by the employer and to recent changes incorporated in the JBCC¨, the GCC 2014 (RSA), the JCT (UK) and the AS 4000 (Australia). More particular emphasis will be placed on the changes between the JBCC¨ edition 6.1 (2014) and its predecessor, the JBCC edition 5.0 Reprint 1 (2007).