The book you are reading comes sixth.

The book you are reading comes sixth

Last week was about the letter nobody wrote. This week is about the page nobody read.

The rock argument reaches a meeting. Somebody has the FIDIC book open and reads out sub-clause 4.12, and the room agrees the ground is the employer's risk. Two weeks later the employer's quantity surveyor sends one line back: refer to the Special Provisions. Sub-clause 4.12 has been amended. It was amended before anybody signed anything.

This isn't a trick, and it isn't unusual. It is how the contract is built, and sub-clause 1.5 Priority of Documents says so in plain terms. It ranks the contract documents, and under the Red Book that ranking runs to eleven entries. These General Conditions — the book everybody quotes — are sixth.

Five documents outrank it. Three rank below. And most of the arguments on a project are conducted by people holding number six.

There is a practical consequence worth stating plainly. If you are pricing a job and somebody hands you “the FIDIC Red Book”, you have been handed the sixth document. The five above it are the ones that were written for this project by somebody with an interest in the outcome, and they are usually shorter and much easier to read than the book. Read them first.

Mutually explanatory, until they are not

Read the first sentence of 1.5 before the list, because it changes what the list is for.

The contract starts from the position that its documents explain each other rather than compete. That is the default. They are meant to agree, and most of the time they do. The sequence only comes into play where there is a conflict, an ambiguity or a discrepancy.

So the first question in any document argument is never “which one wins”. It is whether the two provisions genuinely disagree, or whether one simply says more than the other. A specification that adds detail to a clause is explaining it. A specification that contradicts it is a different problem entirely, and only then does position on the list matter.

What sits above the General Conditions

Five things outrank the General Conditions: the signed agreement itself, then the two letters that formed it — acceptance and tender — and then both halves of the Particular Conditions, Part A being the Contract Data and Part B the Special Provisions.

Those last two are where a project actually lives. The Contract Data is the fill-in-the-blanks document — the periods, the percentages, the names, and the address for communications that Week 1 sent you to look up. The Special Provisions are where the drafter amended the standard clauses to suit this particular job.

Which means the sentence you read in the printed book may not be the sentence you agreed to. When somebody says the contract is FIDIC, they are telling you which General Conditions were used as a starting point. They aren't telling you what survived.

The specification cannot beat a clause

The other direction is just as useful and gets forgotten more often.

Below the General Conditions come the Specification, the Drawings and the Schedules. A note on a drawing reading “contractor to allow for rock in pile bores” doesn't move the risk allocation. It sits three places below the clause that allocates it.

That cuts both ways, and it is worth being honest about the second edge. A helpful sentence in your own method statement doesn't create an entitlement either. If it is not in a document that outranks the Conditions, it is explanation rather than obligation.

Eighty-eight definitions, and one of them decides the rock

Now the page almost nobody reads. Sub-clause 1.1 is a definitions list, and it is long: eighty-eight entries in the Red Book, ninety in Yellow, eighty in Silver.

The convention it establishes is simple and easy to miss. A word written with a capital letter inside the Conditions is a defined term and means exactly what 1.1 says it means. The same word in lower case is just the word.

Risk Week 14 spent a whole article on one of these. Unforeseeable at 1.1.85 is not a description of how surprised anybody was. It is a test: what an experienced contractor could reasonably have foreseen by the Base Date. Read it as the English word and you get an argument about whether the rock was a shock. Read it as the defined term and you get a question with an answer, decided by evidence that existed before the tender went in.

That single capital letter is worth $48,450 on this job.

Finding the provision in ten minutes

Put those three things together and you have a method that doesn't involve reading two hundred pages.

Start at the top of the stack rather than the middle. Open the Contract Data first, because it is short and it answers most factual questions immediately. Then the Special Provisions, to find out whether the clause you are about to rely on still says what the book says. Only then the General Conditions.

When you land on a clause, read every capitalised word in it as a link to 1.1, and follow the ones you have been reading as ordinary English. That is where the surprises are.

And if two documents really do conflict, sub-clause 1.5 doesn't leave it to a conversation. The Party who finds the ambiguity gives a Notice describing it, and the Engineer issues the clarification or instruction. Under Silver there is no Engineer, so the Notice goes to the other Party and the Employer clarifies. Either way it is the same machinery as last week: a document conflict is not something you raise in a meeting. It is something you notify.

One caution on the method. Priority answers a conflict; it doesn't answer a silence. If the Contract Data leaves a period blank and no Special Provision fills it, the General Conditions govern, because nothing above them said anything. Rank only matters where two documents actually speak.

Practical insight

Do this once, this week, and it will save you a dispute later.

Take the five contractual risks you listed after Risk Week 15 and, for each clause number, check three places in this order: the Contract Data, the Special Provisions, the General Conditions. Write down which document your answer actually came from. If every answer came from the General Conditions, you haven't finished — you have read the sixth-ranked document and stopped.

Then take one clause you think you know well and mark every capitalised word in it. Look each one up. Most people find at least one term they had been reading as ordinary English, and it is usually load-bearing.

Keep a one-page note of what you found: clause, what the book says, what the Special Provisions changed, and which defined terms matter. That page is worth more than the two hundred behind it, and you will hand it to whoever replaces you.

Key takeaways

✔ Sub-clause 1.5 ranks eleven documents under the Red Book. The General Conditions come sixth, below the Contract Data and the Special Provisions.

✔ The documents are mutually explanatory by default. The sequence only decides anything where there is a genuine conflict, ambiguity or discrepancy.

✔ “The contract is FIDIC” tells you the starting point, not what survived. The Special Provisions are where the standard clauses were amended.

✔ The Specification, Drawings and Schedules rank below the Conditions. A note on a drawing cannot move a risk allocation — and neither can a helpful line in your own method statement.

✔ A capitalised word in the Conditions is a defined term. Sub-clause 1.1 carries eighty-eight of them in Red, ninety in Yellow, eighty in Silver.

✔ Unforeseeable at 1.1.85 is a test against an experienced contractor at the Base Date, not a statement about surprise. On this job that distinction is worth $48,450.

✔ A document conflict is notified, not discussed. Red and Yellow: Notice to the Engineer, who clarifies. Silver: Notice to the other Party, and the Employer clarifies.

What's coming next

Twice now the answer has ended with the same three words: the Engineer decides. He receives the notice, he judges whether it was late, he clarifies the ambiguity, and in Week 1 he had fourteen days in which his silence worked in your favour. That is a great deal of power for somebody the employer appoints and pays. Next week we look at what the Engineer actually is under the 2017 editions — where his authority comes from, what he is required to do when he determines a matter between the parties, and what changed in 2017 for the contractor who doesn't agree with him.