# FIDIC Red, Yellow and Silver Book: Which One You Are Being Asked to Sign > How FIDIC's Red, Yellow and Silver Books allocate design and risk differently, why the Particular Conditions matter more than the General Conditions, and what UK businesses should check. **Author:** Imad Mohammed Nazar **Category:** Insights **Published:** 2026-08-17 **Reading time:** 9 min If your business works on international infrastructure, or on UK projects with overseas funding or an international sponsor, you will eventually be handed a FIDIC contract. FIDIC, the International Federation of Consulting Engineers, publishes a suite of standard forms distinguished mostly by who carries design responsibility and how much risk sits with the contractor. UK readers used to JCT and NEC will find the logic familiar but the vocabulary different. This is a practical guide to identifying which book you have been sent and what that means commercially. ## The three books you are most likely to see ### The Red Book Conditions of Contract for Construction. The employer is responsible for the design, the contractor builds it, and the works are typically valued by measurement against a bill of quantities. An Engineer administers the contract, certifies payment and makes determinations. Choose this reading if the employer has provided a detailed design. ### The Yellow Book Conditions of Contract for Plant and Design-Build. The contractor designs and builds to the employer's requirements, usually for a lump sum. Design responsibility sits with the contractor, which matters for professional indemnity insurance and for any fitness for purpose obligation. The Engineer's role remains. ### The Silver Book Conditions of Contract for EPC and Turnkey Projects. The contractor takes substantially more risk, including for much of the site information and for unforeseen conditions, in exchange for greater price and time certainty. There is no Engineer in the same sense; the employer administers directly. Commonly used where a project is privately financed and lenders want certainty. The suite also includes the Green Book for short contracts, the Gold Book for design, build and operate, the Emerald Book for underground works and the Pink Book harmonised for multilateral development bank funding. The 2017 second editions are the current mainstream reference for Red, Yellow and Silver. ## Why the book matters more than it looks Moving from Red to Yellow to Silver shifts risk toward the contractor at each step. A business that prices a Silver Book job on Yellow Book assumptions has mispriced it. The three things to establish immediately are who owns the design, who carries the risk of unforeseen physical conditions, and who bears the consequences of errors in the employer's information. ## The Particular Conditions carry the real risk This is the part UK readers will recognise from JCT. A FIDIC contract comes as General Conditions, which are the published standard text, plus Particular Conditions, which amend them for the specific project. Almost nobody uses the General Conditions unamended, and the Particular Conditions are where risk allocation is genuinely decided. Reviewing a FIDIC contract therefore means reading the Particular Conditions against the General Conditions clause by clause, which is slow and error-prone by hand across a long document. This is the step where [GenieAI](https://www.genieai.co/) does real work: it compares the amended document against the base form and surfaces every departure, then rates those departures red, amber or green against the positions your business has already agreed. The output is a shortlist of decisions rather than a re-read. ## Time bars deserve separate attention FIDIC contracts contain notice requirements for claims, with a period running from when the contractor became aware or should have become aware of the event. Miss the window and the entitlement can be lost regardless of merit. UK practitioners are sometimes caught out because the equivalent provisions in JCT and NEC operate differently, and because enforceability of time bars varies by governing law. Check the notice period, what starts it, and what the contract says happens if it is missed. Then make sure the people running the project actually know, because a claims notice provision only works if the site team is aware of it. ## Dispute resolution The 2017 editions provide for a Dispute Avoidance and Adjudication Board, with arbitration to follow if a dispute is not resolved. This is materially different from the UK position, where a statutory right to adjudicate at any time applies to most construction contracts. On an international FIDIC project that statutory right will usually not be available, so the contractual machinery is what you have. Read it before you need it. ## A short checklist for a UK business handed a FIDIC contract - Which book, and which edition - Who owns the design, and whether any fitness for purpose obligation sits with your insurance cover - Who carries unforeseen physical conditions risk - Governing law and seat of arbitration, and whether the UK statutory adjudication right applies at all - Claim notice periods, and who on the project is responsible for serving them - Every departure in the Particular Conditions from the General Conditions, assessed against your own accepted positions --- This is the Markdown representation of [https://www.genieai.co/blog/fidic-red-yellow-silver-book-explained](https://www.genieai.co/blog/fidic-red-yellow-silver-book-explained), provided for AI agents and crawlers. The HTML page is canonical. See [/llms.txt](https://www.genieai.co/llms.txt) for the full content map.