Adam Constable (ed), Keating on Offshore Construction and Marine Engineering Contracts
| Pages | 153-154 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2020.0614 |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| Published date | 01 January 2020 |
Offshore construction and marine engineering are developing areas of endeavour, potentially presenting their own particular legal problems. There is, as yet, little case law specifically addressing the issues thrown up by this sort of activity and there are not yet any standard forms specifically tailored to contracts of this type. This book is thus a useful source of insight for those working in this area. And, while the dearth of case law and standard form contracts has the potential to present problems, it also has advantages, allowing the authors a freedom to consider matters from first principles and to look at issues likely to arise in any contract of this sort.
Taking advantage of this freedom, the authors go carefully through the various stages of the contract process; and, in separate chapters of the book and in fairly conventional terms, they discuss issues such as contract formation and construction, payment and damages, changes to the works and adjustments to the price, delivery and completion, guarantees, passing of title and risk, and dispute resolution. In many cases their discussion is informed by reference to standard form contracts used in on-shore construction and in shipbuilding and by the case law on such forms in these related activities. Extracts from these standard forms are conveniently set out in Appendices to the main text and, indeed, take up about half of the book. This is useful in showing how different issues are dealt with in the different forms, but in many places what follows is largely a summary and comparison of the different approaches in the standard forms rather than any deeper analysis. An example of this is in chapter ten, which deals (amongst other issues) with the passing of risk, a matter of potentially critical importance for the parties. Under the heading “The Passing of Risk” there are four paragraphs (paras 10–018–10–021) summarising the importance of knowing when risk passes and explaining the default position under section 20 of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 that risk passes with title. The chapter then goes on (in paras 10–022–10–040) to summarise the provisions to be found in the various standard forms, drawing a distinction in this respect between shipbuilding contracts and land-based engineering forms. Having discussed briefly how each of the standard forms deals with the question of when risk passes, the authors say (para 10–040) that “the choice of form for the construction of rigs and other off-shore...
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