Contract Law

Contract law studies what an agreement legally actually means: formation, interpretation, breach, liability and termination, regardless of sector.

Every FM agreement, from a single-service cleaning contract to a complex IFM contract, rests on contract law. FM has no contract law of its own — the discipline requires enough legal fluency to recognise risk, plus a clear escalation route to legal specialists once complexity exceeds that fluency.

• Does the contract owner recognise a liability cap that in effect places the entire risk with the client?
• Is there a clear threshold at which an FM professional brings in a lawyer, or does that happen ad hoc?

• General law of obligations and contract law (jurisdiction-dependent).

• FM professionals drafting contracts themselves without legal review risk unintended shifts in liability.

• Sourcing & Contracting

• Contractual risk recognition and legal escalation

• Regieorganisatie — managing organisation / intelligent client function

  The regieorganisatie must recognise contract-law risk long before a dispute arises.

[Content pending]

The standards section arrives in Part 7.

• Standard contract templates reused across jurisdictions without legal review against local law.

Not treated here as an open research question; contract law is settled law, not a developing knowledge domain — the FM application shifts faster than the law itself.

• General introductions to the law of obligations and contract, to be consulted jurisdiction-specifically.