As the old adage goes, “a stich in time saves nine.” The same is no less true in construction law, where legal foresight and prevention can greatly reduce party costs and ensure the effective delivery of outcomes. This issue of The International Construction Law Review will focus on the theme of foresight and prevention, but will examine it not purely through a legal or contractual lens, but also in the governmental, technological and institutional spheres.

We start with “Ground Rules Revisited” by Sir Robert Akenhead, a reflection upon the importance of site investigation to prevent disputes in construction projects, and the contributions of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Conditions of Contract for Ground Investigation to that end. His article is the second in a series reviewing topics from the earlier years of The International Construction Law Review, and in this case his contribution, “Laying Down the Ground Rules”, from 1984.1 Sir Robert highlights why effective site investigation is so important by providing numerous examples of delayed construction projects and construction disputes due to a lack of – or in some cases, in spite of – site investigations. He then considers contamination as a particularly nefarious example, before turning to the creation of the ICE Conditions of Contract for Ground Investigation in 1983. Sir Robert notes the effectiveness of the Conditions of Contract thus far, before acknowledging some criticism as to its length, and some alternatives. Finally, the Report and Specification under the Contract Conditions is examined in detail, alongside what the Specification should contain, namely purpose and scope of the investigation, the known geology and history of the site, the requirements for boreholes, tests, and samples, and the opinions and extrapolations based on the site operations and laboratory testing.

Moving away from foresight in the contractual and physical sense, our next piece addresses digital foresight. In “Use of PDMS Models in Offshore Construction Contracts – The Importance of Specific Contractual Regulations”, Klint Klingberg-Jensen provides an in-depth analysis of the use of digital tools such as BIM, PDMS, and 3D models in the offshore construction industry. Klingberg-Jensen commences with a detailed explanation of BIM, PDMS and 3D models and the distinctions between global and local models, before moving into a discussion about features and challenges of offshore construction projects that affect the importance of the 3D model compared to onshore projects. Klingberg-Jensen then contemplates a criticism of standard offshore fabrication contracts, that they provide insufficient regulation of the use of 3D models and PDMS,