The committee reviewing NZS 3910:2013 has released its proposed revisions for market consultation – DZ 3910:202X. This document can be found here. This provides both a clean and a compare document. The compare document tracks in the amendments made. There will now be an eight-week consultation period with public submissions due by June 30, 2023. Following this the committee will meet to review the submissions received and thereafter issue the new amended NZS 3910.

The Guidelines will not be part of the public consultation process. Updated Guidelines will be finalised once comments have been received and the new standard content completed.

Plain language principles have also not been incorporated in DZ 3910. Time did not allow for this. A decision will be made on whether plain English amendments should be made post the consultation process.

A number of amendments have been made. The full document should be reviewed. There is a lot to digest. To assist you to understand the amendments made we will shortly be providing a series of summaries of the key areas of change. In the meantime some of the key ones to note for your review are:

• Definitions: For example, ‘On Site Overheads’ has been replaced with 'Preliminary and General (P&G)’, and ‘Offsite Overheads and Profit’ with ‘Margin’.
• The Contract: Introduction of a new ‘Target price Contract Price’ mechanism, to allow for the sharing of cost under-runs and over-runs.
• General Obligations: To deal with Health and Safety, protection of the environment and reporting.
• Engineer: With the role being split into a Contract Administrator role and Independent Certifier role, better recognizing the dual and often conflicting duties of the present Engineer. 
• Indemnity: The indemnity is fault based and there is a cap on liability.
• Variations: Which now include prices adjustments, such as contingency payments, provisional sums etc, which are better deal with in this section than in the Payments section. There is also a new section dealing with the final account.
• Time for Completion: The grounds for an EOT are largely the same, but how they are notified and assessed have significantly changed.
• Payments (including retentions): These tie in with the changes to the newly named ‘Variations and Contract Price Adjustment’ section.
• Disputes: Significant changes split between sections 6 and 13 of the Contract, and hopefully easier to understand.

The above list is by no means complete but may assist in your review. 

We have been heavily involved with the review, with Partner Paul Buetow, being part of the committee that undertook the review. As mentioned above, we will provide more detailed summaries over the next few weeks of the amendments made. Watch this space.