UAV-GC 2025

The UAV-GC 2025 is the renewed set of conditions for integrated contracts in construction and infrastructure. As with the UAV-GC 2005, design and execution sit within one contract, but the 2025 version makes clearer what parties may expect from each other during the project. The contract is not only about transferring risks. It is mainly about identifying risks in time, discussing them and managing them in a demonstrable way.

That makes the UAV-GC 2025 less of a legal update and more of a behavioural rule for professional contract management. Anyone who waits passively, leaves unclear information unresolved or fails to record assumptions is not building a negotiating position, but creating an evidence problem.

What changes in the UAV-GC 2025?

The most important shift is that collaboration, information and liability are linked more explicitly. For clients and contractors, the following points are strategically relevant:

• Collaboration becomes a contractual duty: The new collaboration provision (§2a) makes proactive conduct testable. Parties must inform each other in time, discuss risks and avoid postponing problems until the claim phase.
• Information must surface earlier: The client must provide relevant data, but the contractor cannot remain silent when information is missing or contradictory. Questions, assumptions and reservations should already be made explicit during the tender and proposal stage.
• Assumptions gain legal value: Under the UAV-GC 2025, an assumption is not a loose estimate, but a way to make uncertainty contractually manageable. Assumptions that are not recorded often work against the party that relied on them.
• Liability requires a new calculation: The liability regime after delivery can have a heavier impact because of the €1,500,000 minimum threshold than the familiar percentage of the contract sum suggests. Especially for small and medium-sized projects, this belongs in the risk profile upfront.

Why this matters for proposals

The UAV-GC 2025 rewards parties that make their reasoning visible. A sharp proposal therefore contains not only a price and schedule, but also a clear risk allocation. Which information was used? Which data is missing? Which assumptions sit underneath the price? And which choices still require confirmation from the client?

For clients, this means that a functional request must genuinely remain functional. Anyone who still prescribes every detail partially pulls design responsibility and failure risk back to themselves. For contractors, it means that risk management does not start after award, but already during the questions round, calculation and proposal.

Practical application

Do not use the UAV-GC 2025 as a standard appendix that is only read after award. Treat the conditions as a checklist for the proposal phase:

• Record all price-determining assumptions explicitly.
• Connect risks to measures, responsibilities and decision moments.
• Use the questions round to correct missing or contradictory information.
• Check whether liability limits, insurance and project size fit together financially.
• Document collaboration: decisions, warnings and escalations must be traceable later.