Conflict Prevention in Project Management

This handbook is about the handling of external conflicts in international technical projects written for Project Managers and Engineers, Sales Managers, Executives and Legal Managers as seen from the client's as well as from the contractor's side. It is also for students seeking to become leaders in these disciplines and not to reproduce mistakes that others have made before them. The book does not try to give legal advice, but it helps engineers and project managers how to plan and execute their project in order to avoid major conflicts during the project.


Contractual disagreements between the acting parties evolving into conflicts and litigation are very frequent in international projects. This handbook therefore describes and analyzes how disagreements and conflicts between client, contractor and subcontractors can be avoided or should be handled if they occur.


The book thus covers the contract negotiations between the parties and the contract drafting which are in many cases the roots for conflicts in a project. How to prevent or to solve conflicts using a psychological approach is presented thereafter, followed by a discussion on how to handle direct negotiations – the preferred method - before resorting to soft resolution methods. If these methods do not lead to success or are intentionally not pursued, then arbitration or litigation in front of state courts has to be applied. How to best prepare such litigation, how to handle the case and how to act, when an expertise is asked for by the court, are subsequently discussed. Finally the basic tools of project management are presented as a help to avoid conflicts.


Special emphasis is given to case studies, procedures, guidelines, project management tools and check-lists as used in international projects to help the responsible project manager in solving his difficult task to bring the project to a successful end.