The ‘best yet’ NEC suite of collaborative-style procurement contracts will be unveiled in June. What improvements can we expect?
NEC4, the next evolution in the NEC suite of collaborative-style procurement contracts, will be launched at the NEC UK users’ group annual seminar on 22 June 2017 at County Hall in London.
Support for the now extensively used NEC3 suite, launched 12 years ago, will continue for existing users and projects as required.
As with NEC's previous evolutions the proven and unique processes for collaboration, fair dealing and good management will remain. The first three versions of the contract suite have now successfully delivered several £100bn worth of works, services and supplies throughout the world.
NEC4 has been improved and streamlined to take into account unprecedented levels of user feedback together with consultation responses, industry developments and emerging best practice.
The result is further improvements in flexibility, clarity and ease of use – making it 'the best NEC yet'.
New design build operate and alliancing contracts
NEC has led the way in industry transformation and evolving practices and two new additions to the suite in June reflect this.
A new NEC4 Design Build Operate contract (DBO) will be added to the suite reflecting the increasing demand for contracts extending into the operational phase. This is already popular for projects funded by international development banks and aligns with UK Government's drive towards initiatives such as 'soft landings' and building information modelling.
A consultative NEC4 Alliance contract (ALC) for multi-party integrated teams is also being published. Alliancing is another exciting procurement direction for a number of clients, particularly for highly complex projects with an emerging scope.
Support for NEC4 users
As with NEC3 there will be a comprehensive range of support for NEC4 users. Guidance notes have been updated and consolidated into four documents - covering procurement strategy, contract preparation, supplier selection and contract management – which is intended to make them more logical and helpful.
New and updated guide books as well as training courses, workshops and webinars will be rolled out this year and beyond.
The NEC team in London and NEC user groups in the UK, Hong Kong and New Zealand look forward to helping new and existing NEC users improve the results they can achieve using NEC4 contracts in the future.
