Understanding Contract Risk in Projects

A Practical Guide to Commercial Decisions

Most contract risk is not a drafting problem. It is a commercial one.

Construction and engineering contracts allocate risk through clauses that sound clear and operate ambiguously. Experienced practitioners read them, sign them, and then discover during delivery that the risk sits somewhere different from where the wording suggested, because contract risk actually lives in the commercial decisions made during pricing, negotiation, and delivery, not in the words on the page.

Across twenty chapters, this book works through the clauses that drive the largest commercial outcomes on real projects: scope and change, time and programme, money and payment, risk allocation, and management and closeout, applying the same three-question framework to each: what does this clause make you do, what happens if you cannot, and who decides whether you have.

For commercial managers, project directors, procurement leads, and senior engineers with commercial authority on capital projects.