The potential for adopting the NEC's family of contracts on PFI projects

The use of the private sector in the provision of public services under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is still a relatively new concept. The structure of a project under the PFI leads to the involvement of a number of parties and this necessitates the formation of a number of different contracts to regulate the relationships. These range in complexity from the main concession contract for the funding, supply, operation and maintenance of the asset, to subcontracts between the concessionaire and the various subcontractors. As the New Engineering Contract (NEC) has been designed to provide a contracting system which stimuates good management and is sufficiently flexible to be used for all the interfaces in a complex project, it is a strong candidate for adoption at all the interfaces in a PFI project. The paper concludes that there is potential for using the different contract forms in the NEC family for a number of the different relationships under a PFI project and more specifically DBFO projects.