The lack of success of the ECC and PPC2000 contracts and the likely lack of take-up of the Be contract will not, however, be because rotten old lawyers advise their clients to avoid them because they don't "pile all the risk" on the contractor. Bingham was no doubt playing to the gallery with that remark, but anyone with a passing familiarity with the procurement end of the construction process would be aware that most contracts are let without the involvement of lawyers.
The difficulty that the Be contract will face is not lawyers but contractors, architects and quantity surveyors, who will need to be convinced that it offers something sufficiently different and more worthwhile than the JCT forms. I suspect many will take the view expressed by Peter Thompson of Slough Estates at the launch of the Be contract that "collaboration requires commitment, not contracts" and concentrate on building effective relationships between the construction team while sticking with the contractual framework of the JCT devil they know.
Postscript
Marc Hanson, CMS Cameron McKenna, via email.
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