In response to the developing coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and the increasingly profound effect it is having on global businesses, FIDIC has produced urgent guidance to help support its member associations and consulting engineering firms.

The guidance document, Coronavirus (COVID-19): FIDIC Guidance for Global Consulting Engineering Businesses, includes information that will assist firms in informing their response to this unprecedented global pandemic. The document spans a number of areas and offers helpful guidance to businesses covering what boards and management teams should do, as well as useful information on staff and salaries and cash flow.

FIDIC chief executive Dr Nelson Ogunshakin said: “COVID-19 is challenging our people and our businesses in ways many of us had not planned for. The FIDIC board has already taken a number of steps to protect our organisation, its staff and our members in the face of coronavirus and we are taking every possible step to ensure that we function as best we can through the current crisis and beyond. We hope that our guidance will provide some assistance to FIDIC member associations and consulting engineering firms to help them to survive the crisis and to thrive beyond it.”

The guidance document also signposts to some of the significant resources available online to assist businesses to plan and work their way through the pandemic. This includes Harvard Business Review guides on responding to the coronavirus crisis and also information from international law firm Hogan Lovells including a very helpful checklist on Coronavirus as a contractual force majeure event.

Ogunshakin said: “As well as helping our member associations around the world, we also wanted to make the FIDIC guidance available to the wider industry and that’s why we have taken the decision to make Coronavirus (COVID-19): FIDIC Guidance for Global Consulting Engineering Businesses available for download from our website. It is important that the industry comes together and helps each other in these challenging times and we hope that our guidance will make a difference to firms as they seek to respond to the developing crisis.”