Any industry is focusing on creating an environment that is as safe as possible for everyone that is involved. This is no different for the construction industry. However, the construction industry is placed second in the ranking of most dangerous industries. The Dutch Safety Board, being an independent administrative body, has recommended to integrate a third party into the contractual general terms and conditions such as the UAC for integrated contracts. The objective of this research is to examine whether there is any potential to integrate a third party into the UAC-IC 2005 contract. This potential is being examined using a comparison between the UAC-IC 2005 and FIDIC Yellow Book 1999, a contract in which a third party is already present. In this comparison, the main focus points are the "vital tasks & responsibilities" that are necessary in order to safeguard safety on site, safety of the surrounding area & structural safety.

This thesis has found that the three types of safety can be improved if the vital tasks & responsibilities are properly performed. These tasks & responsibilities mainly relate to the management of project specific and safety related risks, and to the safety approach that is a result of this risk management system. From a theoretical point of view, the UAC-IC 2005 and the Dutch Building Decree are able to facilitate these vital tasks & responsibilities. The ON is responsible for most of the vital tasks & responsibilities, and the OG has the possibility to use an external control mechanism to verify this. The practical situation is however different. It is not uncommon that other aspects like time, or money can get more important for the contracting party than proper risk management processes and the corresponding safety approach. Work is not executed as intended, but rather as work-as-actually-done. The OG’s incentives in the UAC-IC can be insufficient for him to effectively perform this external control mechanism. This leads to a possible situation in which no internal nor external control mechanism is present, which is to the detriment of safety. The Engineer, being the party that is responsible for an external independent control mechanism in the Yellow Book’s quality assurance system, does have more incentives to actually make him perform this external independent control mechanism effectively. This incentive has its origin in the uncapped liability which the Engineer can be held liable for. If the Dutch version of the role of the Engineer would be integrated into the UAC-IC, he would be able to improve the three types of safety when he takes over the responsibility for the external control mechanism from the OG under the assumption that this external control mechanism will be performed more effectively. This assumption is valid if the Dutch Engineer would have a comparable liability as in the White Book. Since TNR 2011 would most likely be used in the Dutch construction industry, the liability in TNR 2011 must be increased for Dutch Engineers in order to be comparable to FIDIC’s White Book.

The Dutch public infrastructure faces several challenges in the coming decades. A significant portion of public infrastructure such as bridges need to be replaced or renovated in the coming decades, and the public infrastructure authorities have set an ambitious goal to become completely circular by 2030. Service-oriented infrastructure (Infrastructure-as-a-service) is presented as a solution to require contractors to increase circularity as they would be incentivized to retain the value of assets. This study aims at developing a research framework to be used by public clients assessing the viability of a service-oriented approach. The study uses the Double Diamond design framework to first conduct interviews and codify them, followed by designing a framework through iterative designs and validating it in an interview with a public client (Dutch water board). Grounded theory is used for analyzing the interviews from specific infrastructure assets to general theory. The framework presents six criteria [Innovation, Integrality, Public authority & ownership, Supply, Circularity and Duration] on which a service-oriented approach should be analyzed. The study finds that clients first and foremost focus on their statutory duties, while optimization of infrastructure is seen as risky if the fines for failing to provide an adequate service are manifold in comparison to the perceived benefit. The study finds that a service-oriented approach should be considered only in specific (mostly high-technology) cases where the benefit of continuous improvement through the service-delivery is evident. The study contradicts an earlier study in the Netherlands, which declared that all stakeholders should shift towards a service-oriented approach in order to guarantee circularity. The timeline to become completely circular is too short to let the market build up a complete supply of circular infrastructure and supply it on a service-oriented basis.

The integrated contract UAV-GC 2005 is gaining popularities in Dutch construction industry, which is meant to bring added value to the employer. Nevertheless, due to embedded culture and other social factors, people are still strongly influenced by the ‘old way of working’. For instance, project problems between employer and contractor are often settled too late, which leads to excessive amount of costs. As a result, parties begin to blame each other, and vicious cycle starts. From a legal point of view, it is deemed that the duty to warn obligation of UAV-GC 2005 does not necessarily play its role in facilitating problem solving between the employer and the contractor. While in an international level, the early warning of NEC3 ECC originated from U.K. construction industry is catching increasingly attention all over the world, which is known as its ‘proactive risk management’ approach in dealing with project problems. Under early warning obligation, parties are obliged to inform each other of any matter which could affect costs, completion, progress or quality of the project. It is even praised as ‘jewel in the crown’ by many. Therefore, it is inspired that whether the duty to warn of UAV-GC 2005 can be “substituted” by the early warning of NEC3 ECC, so as to improve problem solving on Dutch Design and build construction projects. Nevertheless, the NEC3 ECC contract has not been extensively applied in the Dutch construction industry, so that it is both legally and culturally alien to the “Dutch approach”. Therefore, problem in this respect is twofold, which is the deficiencies of the duty to warn of UAV-GC 2005 on one hand while the unfamiliarity of the early warning of NEC3 ECC to the Dutch construction industry on the other. Accordingly, the primary research objective of this dissertation is to investigate the deficiencies of duty to warn of UAV-GC 2005 and the added value of early warning of NEC3 ECC in terms of facilitating construction problem solving between the employer and the contractor. The secondary objective is to probe into the requirements for early warning to function with its genuine intention, from both contractual and cultural perspectives...