Briefly about the standard contracts

Stein Frederick Janzon

sfj@byggogprosjektjus.no

Norsk Standard has published the standard contracts that are most often used in land-based contracts. The standard contracts are drawn up by committees composed of representatives of all interest groups within the construction and construction activities in Norway. The contracts are therefore often referred to as “agreed documents” where the result is a minimum common multiple. The interests of all stakeholders have been collated, assessed and tried to be balanced into a “fair” agreement document.

The short version

Norsk Standard has prepared the standard contracts that are most frequently used when it comes to land-based construction and construction projects

The main contracts, which are concluded with the builder as the one contracting party, are NS 8405, NS 8406 and NS 8407. The first two are execution centres and the last one concerns turnkey contracts.

For the contractual relationship down to the subcontractors, three corresponding contracts have been made, namely NS 8415, NS 8416 and NS 8417. The idea is to use these back to back with the main contract ending in the same digit (5, 6 or 7).

NS 8406 (and NS 8416) are intended to be used in projects where there is one contractor, or only a few. In addition, they are intended for projects where there is no need for a strict formalistic and written notification system with so-called preclusive deadlines.

In our account of individual provisions and issues, we take as a basis NS 8407 and NS 8417, respectively, since turnkey contracts are the most commonly used today.