What are contemporary records under FIDIC?
Records made at the time the events happened — not reconstructed afterwards. FIDIC 2017 puts the duty in express terms: the claiming party must keep “such contemporary records as may be necessary to substantiate the Claim”, and the engineer may monitor those records and instruct that further ones be kept. Daily reports, timestamped photographs, weather logs and manpower returns are the substance of it.
Why “contemporary” is the operative word
The requirement is not simply that records exist. It is that they were made contemporaneously — as the events occurred. A report compiled on Thursday for Monday is not a contemporary record, and in a digital system the metadata says so.
In Attorney General for the Falkland Islands v Gordon Forbes Construction the court held that witness statements produced after the event cannot substitute for missing contemporary records. There is no retrospective cure: if the record was not made at the time, later testimony does not fill the hole.
The engineer can ask for more
FIDIC also gives the engineer the power to monitor the records being kept and to instruct that further records be kept. A contractor that treats record-keeping as an internal chore rather than a contractual duty is exposed on both fronts — the claim it cannot substantiate, and the instruction it did not comply with.
In the guides
Terms
References
- module: /modules/daily-reports/ — FIDIC 2017 contemporary records; AG for the Falkland Islands v Gordon Forbes Construction [2003] 6 BLR 280
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