Entries open for FIDIC Contract Users’ Awards

FIDIC’s annual awards celebrating excellence in the use of FIDIC contract forms and showcasing good practice through collaboration from across the world are now open for entries.

The British Normandy Memorial in northern France, the winner of last year’s Project of the Year Award.

Entries are now open for the FIDIC Contract Users’ Awards, which recognise excellence in the use of FIDIC contract forms for project delivery and showcase examples of good practice through collaboration from across the world. The awards bring together the global community of FIDIC contract users to celebrate and highlight excellence and best practice and raise the profile of FIDIC contracts on an international scale.

This year’s winners will be presented with their awards at the Official FIDIC International Contract Users’ Conference (Europe, Middle East & Africa time zone event) which is planned to take place digitally from 29 November 2021 to 2 December 2021. The awards will be presented digitally at the above conference on the evening of Tuesday 30 November 2021.

Last year’s Project of the Year Award was won by the British Normandy Memorial for a special project to build a worthy British national memorial to the men and women who died on D-Day and during the subsequent Normandy campaign in the Summer of 1944. The memorial stands on rising ground in Ver-sur-Mer, Normandy, overlooking Gold Beach and although a British Memorial, it commemorates combatants from 38 different countries worldwide, who fought and died during the campaign. The engineer on the project was Michael Coombs of Alan Baxter Ltd and the contractor was Eiffage.

There are a total of ten categories in this year’s awards as follows:

• FIDIC Contracts Project of the Year

• FIDIC Contracts Client of the Year

• FIDIC Contracts Consultant of the Year

• FIDIC Contracts IFI (International Finance Institution) of the Year

• FIDIC Contracts Contractor of the Year

• FIDIC contract legal or professional services of the Year

• FIDIC Contracts trainer(s) of the Year

• FIDIC Contract adjudicator(s) of the Year

• FIDIC Strategic Partners of the Year

• FIDIC Golden Principles Award

The FIDIC Contracts Project of the Year award is for any project procured under a FIDIC Contract. Entries should give a description of best practice achieved on their FIDIC project(s) with particular emphasis on the 1999 or 2017 editions of the FIDIC contract form. The FIDIC Contracts Client of the Year Award is open to entries from any client or organisation and entries should give a description of best practice achieved with their supply chain on their project using FIDIC contract forms.

The FIDIC Contracts Consultant of the Year category is open to any consultant or consultancy and engineering organisation and entries will describe the best practice outcomes that they have achieved by using FIDIC contracts. Meanwhile, the FIDIC Contracts IFI (International Finance Institution) of the Year Award is aimed at recognising international finance institutions with the best procurement policy and proactive engagement with borrowers and stakeholders on capacity-building, institutional strengthening and training.

FIDIC is also keen to recognise the contracting sector for their work and the FIDIC Contracts Contractor of the year category is open to any contracting organisation that can demonstrate best practice and good outcomes achieved on their project using FIDIC contracts.

Recognising the work of the legal and wider professional services sector is also important to FIDIC and the FIDIC Contracts Legal or Professional Services of the Year Award will reward best practice by a legal firm during the year based on their outstanding contribution to the wider use of FIDIC contracts. Competition is expected to be particularly strong in this category and all legal firms working with FIDIC contracts are encouraged to enter.

Training on the use of FIDIC contracts is a key area and the FIDIC Contracts Trainer(s) of the Year Award aims to recognise the efforts of an individual or a company in the provision of training for FIDIC contracts. Meanwhile, the FIDIC Contracts Adjudicator(s) of the Year Award will highlight and reward the efforts of an individual or company in the provision of adjudication services for FIDIC contracts.

The FIDIC Strategic Partners of the Year Award will be another keenly contested category and will be awarded to an organisation or a group of organisations to recognise their outstanding contribution to the effective use of the FIDIC contracts on a country focused or global scale.

Finally, the FIDIC Golden Principles Award will be awarded to any person, organisation or organisations for their strict compliance to the FIDIC Golden Principles on the execution of particular projects using any of the FIDIC contract suites.

All entries for all the categories in the FIDIC Contract Users’ Awards need to be submitted and completed online and the closing date for entries is Friday 15 October 2021. The digital entry platform is easy to use and has been set up in such a way that entrants can complete their entry in multiple sittings by saving their work and then returning later to complete their entry.