The reason is straightforward: most teams are co-operating, not collaborating. And the two are not the same thing.
- Co-operation: ‘You do your bit, I’ll do mine.’ Obligations are met. Problems are not jointly owned.
- Collaboration: ‘Let us solve this together.’ Parties share ownership of challenges, communicate openly under pressure, and put project outcomes ahead of organisational protection.
Clause 10.2 does not ask for co-operation. It demands collaboration. A simple test: when a problem arises on site, what is the instinctive response? If the answer is ‘not my responsibility’ or ‘that’s a Contractor issue’, the collaboration test has already failed — regardless of what the contract says.
Three Clauses That Change Everything
To understand Clause 10.2 properly, two other clauses must be read alongside it.
Clause 10.1 requires the Parties, Project Manager and Supervisor to ‘act as stated in this contract’. This is the procedural foundation: governance through consistent, agreed rules applied fairly and without exception.
Clause 11.2(13) defines ‘the Parties’ as the Client and the Contractor. This is NEC’s most important and most overlooked structural move. Under traditional forms of contract, the employer and the Contractor are adversaries: interests are opposed, risk is allocated accordingly. Clause 11.2(13) rejects this architecture entirely. The Client and Contractor are not opposing sides. They are, contractually, one entity with shared obligations.
The significance of Clause 10.2 is profound. The obligation to act in a spirit of mutual trust and co-operation does not sit alongside an adversarial contract structure. It sits within a contract that has already, structurally, unified the parties. Without Clause 11.2(13), mutual trust is an aspiration layered onto an adversarial framework. With it, mutual trust is the logical expression of a relationship that the contract has already defined as collaborative.
Clause 11.2(13) does not merely define a term. It redefines the relationship. What follows in Clause 10.2 is not a request for goodwill. It is the ethical expression of a partnership the contract has already made.
This has direct consequences for the Project Manager. The Project Manager is not intended to operate merely as an agent of the Client. They are the administrator of a unified relationship, with obligations of fairness and impartiality to both Parties. Where a PM operates primarily to protect the Client’s position at the Contractor’s expense, they are not just failing behaviourally. They are operating outside the structural logic of the contract itself.
What Philosophy Tells Us
Our article draws on five philosophers to examine what mutual trust and co-operation actually require. Three insights stand out for NEC practitioners.
Locke on governance: legitimate governance depends on consent and consistent fairness. Where Project Managers apply procedures selectively, or where Z clauses extend Client control beyond reasonable limits, trust deteriorates. Locke put it plainly: those who transgress the fundamental rules of the system ‘forfeit the power the people had put into their hands’. In NEC terms, a PM who uses authority for ends contrary to the collaborative trust that conferred it does not merely violate Clause 10.2 — they forfeit the legitimacy of that authority.
Kant on duty: every party must treat counterparts as partners with legitimate interests and professional dignity — not as instruments to be managed. Withholding early warnings for commercial advantage, gaming compensation event submissions, using procedures defensively rather than collaboratively: under Kantian ethics, these are not merely poor practice. They are ethical failures. Psychological safety — the environment in which concerns can be raised honestly — is not a soft concept. It is the operational precondition for Clause 10.2.
Arendt on power: true power emerges from people acting together, not from positional authority. A Project Manager who exercises control through rigid interpretation and unilateral decision-making generates compliance, not collaboration. The project obeys but does not flourish. Arendt’s insight is directly applicable: ‘Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities.’ Where early warnings are raised strategically and risk registers maintained for record rather than for resolution, there is no real power — only the appearance of authority.
The Missing Governance Layer
Perhaps the most important practical point in our paper is also the most uncomfortable: NEC demands collaborative behaviour but currently provides no governance infrastructure to assess, measure or enforce it.
- No definition of what ‘mutual trust and co-operation’ requires in observable, behavioural terms.
- No assessment criteria for evaluating whether collaboration is genuine or merely performative.
- No consequence where a party is persistently non-collaborative but technically compliant.
This creates a real problem. How should a Project Manager assess whether Clause 10.2 is being met? What happens when one party is acting defensively and controlling, whilst the other is genuinely trying to collaborate? NEC offers no guidance.
The challenge is no longer whether collaboration is desirable. The challenge is whether collaboration can be governed.
Our paper proposes that developing this governance infrastructure is the most important next step for NEC implementation. A meaningful framework would need to define collaborative behaviours in observable terms, build in periodic project health assessments, make PM accountability explicit against behavioural as well as programme and cost metrics, and create consequences for persistent non-compliance. Procurement should also reward demonstrated collaborative performance, not only cost and time compliance.
Culture Trumps Contracts
Philosophy and governance structures matter. But neither operates without leadership.
The difference between NEC projects that truly collaborate and those that merely co-exist is almost never the contract. It is leadership and culture. Project teams observe how leaders respond during adversity. They notice whether fairness is consistent or selective. They register whether concerns raised openly are met with genuine engagement or defensive deflection. Trust is built — or destroyed — through accumulated patterns of behaviour across the life of a project.
A project can follow every clause procedurally, but if the culture is broken — if defensiveness, blame and information control dominate — the contract will not save it.
Ultimately, NEC succeeds not because of what is written in the contract, but because project leaders choose to live its spirit.
About the Authors
Sean Leung is currently in the penultimate year of a BA (Hons) in Philosophy at University College London, with particular interests in ethical theory, political philosophy and the philosophical dimensions of institutional and contractual systems. His recent work explores the behavioural and relational dimensions of NEC collaboration and governance, examining how concepts such as trust, legitimacy and communicative rationality shape project relationships in practice.
Tim Leung CEng CSci FICE FIMMM FHKIE NEC Pro is Founder and Director of Apex Tech Solutions Ltd, Hong Kong. With over 30 years of experience in infrastructure construction and NEC implementation, he led multiple award-winning NEC projects recognised at the Martin Barnes Awards 2023, was runner-up for NEC Business Leader of the Year 2024, and serves on the HKIAC Panel of Adjudicators.
Join Tim & Sean for the Upcoming Webinar on Friday, 19th June 12:30 pm!
