428 Contractual Provisions for Health and Safety: Standard Form Contracts in the UK Construction Industry Dingayo Mzyece 123 , Issaka Ndekugri, Nii Ankrah and Felix Hammond Built Environment Department, School of Technology, University of Wolverhampton, UK Abstract The importance of construction sector activities to any economy cannot be overstated yet this industry is faced with numerous concerns with Health and Safety (H&S) practices being at the top. This study examines H&S contractual provisions in four standard form contracts widely used in the UK construction industry because of their ‘bargaining power’. It is established using content analysis and literature review that the Joint Contracts Tribunal (JCT) and General Conditions of Government Contracts for Building and Civil Engineering Works (GC/Works) embrace key features of secondary legislation such as compliance, cooperation and competence while the New Engineering Contract (NEC) and Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) contracts promote flexibility, fairness and certainty. The novelty of this study is in its ability to compare H&S contractual provisions with key features of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 (CDM 2007). The conclusions drawn from the study demonstrate the need for greater clarity and uniformity in standard form contracts particularly in the area of H&S. Keywords Regulation, law, standardization. INTRODUCTION Health and safety as an ‘agenda’ for the UK construction industry has been surrounded with concerns in practice (Donaghy, 2009; Löfstedt, 2011). Standard form contracts therefore provide a platform for expressing health and safety contractual provisions. Embedded in a contract, these provisions will describe the obligations of either party making them accountable for their actions and to a large extent share project risks. The importance of a contract cannot be over stated in which contractual provisions are provided as the bargaining power of either party. It is on this premise that construction standard forms of contract provide conditions on which either party performs. Ashworth (2012) argues that it is not practical to write a new set of conditions for every project and hence the need for standard forms. Murdoch and Hughes (2008) suggest that standard forms can be understood as a means of distributing risk. It is against this background, that this study seeks to understand the allocation of risk in terms of health and safety. Recent attempts have been made to look at reforming health and safety (such as Winward, 2010; Young, 2010; Löfstedt, 2011) making this research relevant and consistent to the needs of the industry at large. The study identifies four standard form contracts widely used across the UK construction industry namely: (i) JCT; (ii) NEC3; (iii) FIDIC; and (iv) GC/Works of which an analysis is carried out on health and safety contractual provisions. Patterson (2010) observed that standard form contracts will have both advantages and disadvantages of which the most advantage is to reduce cost. These findings are relevant to the construction industry due to the uncertain nature of construction (fragmentation). Sales (1953) for instance emphasises that standard form contracts exist to “clarify the 123 d.mzyece@wlv.ac.uk