Private works contracts

In France, private works contracts are a matter of free negotiation between the parties. However, this contractual freedom has its limits in the regulatory environment of construction sites (health and safety, protection of workers, subcontractors and home buyers). Public, social and economic laws, which cannot be circumvented, provide a framework for the activities of project owners and their landlords.

Subject to these laws, many of which are codified in the Code du travail and the Code de la construction et de l'habitation, the conditions for executing a private contract are variable. Standards have certainly been drawn up by AFNOR (NF P 03-001 for building works [latest edition: October 2017], and NF P 03-002 for civil engineering works [latest edition: October 2014]) to provide participants in the act of building with a framework to govern their contractual relations, with the onus on them to define the specific terms and conditions of execution for each operation, with the contract, signed in all its components, then becoming the law of the parties. However, these standards are not mandatory, and are only binding if the contract signed refers to them.

The aim of this article is to provide the reader with a synthetic approach to all these issues, which are often scattered throughout specialized books and articles.