The Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) and the British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM) have announced a joint initiative to explore the potential to develop a completely new form of contract explicitly for facilities management.
The initiative follows feedback from some BIFM members that existing forms of contract, developed primarily for use in construction or mechanical and electrical projects, did not meet all their needs. If findings from the project research uphold this, a new form of contract will be developed as part of the well-regarded NEC4 contract suite.
The two organisations say the new contract products ‘aim to reflect and support the diverse FM industry, to advance good practice in the procurement and management of FM services in what could be the latest iteration of the widely used contract form, NEC4’. The form has been enhanced to reflect procurement and project management developments and emerging best practice, with improvements in flexibility, clarity, and administration, and is suitable for procuring schemes ranging from major works to small-scale projects.
The first piece of joint work under an MOU will be to identify the contractrelated needs and challenges of those working in FM through ‘a discrete piece of research’. The resulting insight will determine the development of a potential bespoke service contract adaptation of NEC4 ‘to provide an industry-wise framework for best-in-class facilities management activity’.
