Update For IMCA’S Marine Construction Contract
The International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA) has published a variety of guides, templates and discussion documents aimed at raising awareness on contracting issues. It focuses on liability and insurance issues, promoting discussion and providing tools that may be useful for its contractor members, their clients and sub-contractors. All are subject to revision to ensure usefulness to all stakeholders and that it just what has happened to a key document – ‘IMCA Marine Construction Contract’, with revision to others relating to offshore survey and ROV work in the pipeline. All are designed to aid clients and contractors alongside their in-house standard contracts and other industry publications.
The IMCA Marine Construction Contract is a worldwide standard contract for use by any party as appropriate. It is based on the well established LOGIC contract ‘General conditions of contract (including guidance notes) for marine construction’, which was published for use in the UK. The IMCA Contracts & Insurance workgroup drafted the original (and updated) version for worldwide use. It is based on English law, but this can be varied to suit users. It is particularly useful where the parties do not have an ‘in-house’ contract which is often the case for smaller companies and in new regions. The update provides a number of small clarifications and amendments to the wording.
“Our work on contracts has been very much at the forefront in recent months,” explains IMCA’s Chief Executive, Hugh Williams. “Not only have we revised our Marine Construction Contract, but held an ‘Allocating Risks’ seminar attended by around 70 delegates, most with legal or insurance responsibility for oil companies, contractors or advisers; and we also issued a questionnaire about our contracts work to our contractor and corresponding oil company members which has resulted in most welcome feedback.