19.11.1 General

The draft contract (DC) document constitutes the draft of the final contract proposed by the owner and which he intends to sign with the selected bidder. Again in this case, if the contract concerns the turnkey purchase of a plant (single-package approach), there will be one main contract; in the event of a multi-package (two or more) approach, a separate contract will be drafted for each package included in plant procurement.

The DC document should basically contain:

• The owner’s proposed terms and conditions for the final contract, cover­ing all the legal, administrative, organisational, technical, economic, financial and commercial aspects of the transaction that require agree­ment between the owner and the successful bidder in the final contract

• The identification of the ‘contract documents’, that is, all the documents that will form part of the final contract, listed in the order of precedence to be applied vis-a-vis one another in case of discrepancy.

Far from being a matter exclusively for engineers or for lawyers, the preparation of the terms and conditions should preferably involve a

multi-disciplinary team of experts for the technical aspects, lawyers for the legal aspects, as well as experts for licensing and permitting, insurance and finance. Including the participation of a lawyer (or lawyers) familiar with the laws of the owner’s country and with international contracting is espe­cially advisable.

As regards nuclear fuel, a single contract may be devised for both the plant and the nuclear fuel, or separate contracts may be prepared for the plant supply and for the nuclear fuel. The latter approach is more frequent.