Team size: 13

Key team members: Louise Dahl Krath Jensen (lawyer and deputy director), Mads Severin Holm (lawyer and senior chief consultant), Torkil Schrøder-Hansen (lawyer and chief consultant)

The Danish Construction Federation (DI Byggeri) is an independent business organisation – within the Confederation of Danish Industries (DI) – that contains approximately 6,700 members, including contractors and manufacturing companies within the Danish building and construction sector.

The legal department is primarily devoted to the legal areas of construction law, contract law, public procurement law and competition law. In general, the legal team is occupied with providing legal advice to our members; protecting our members’ legal interests when rules and regulations are made; keeping our members updated on the latest regulation and case law; educating our members on legal matters (courses and webinars); compiling legal templates and other legal tools

Our most significant cases and victories include:

2020-22: In Denmark we do not have a written construction act regulating construction contracts. Instead, these contracts are normally based on “the general conditions for building and construction works” (AB 18). AB 18 from July 2018 is a set of (balanced) standard legal terms negotiated between parties with conflicting interests. Among the negotiating parties were, among others several contracting authorities and The Danish Construction Federation. As a main rule, it is possible (and fully legal) to make deviations from AB 18. However, such deviations need to be thought-out since they, in many cases, will disturb the terms of the intended legal balance which again may result in uncertainty, or frustrations and more disputes. We have continuously, and to a considerable extent, made inquiries to a large number of contracting authorities discussing AB 18 and tender conditions in general. Furthermore, we have published a “deviation-catalogue”, which is a list of deviations accompanied with our comments. Our persistency on the “deviation agenda” has led to an increase in awareness regarding the matter.

2022: Published legal opinion on how to contractually handle the implications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Our opinion on the matter guided the entire construction industry.

2022: According to AB 18, the contractor is – under certain conditions – granted compensation for exceptional price increases for material and fuel. On this matter, our interpretation of the rules in AB 18 and our developed calculation tool have been normative for the entire construction industry.

2022: The Danish Tender Act (“tilbudsloven”) was amended in 2022. During the amendment process the legislators originally planned to remove a section (section 7) of the Act which would reduce the contractor’s legal position in connection with the contracting authority’s opening of the contractor’s tenders. Thus, the section stated that each contractor submitting a tender is entitled to be present at the contracting authority’s opening of all the incoming tenders and to become familiar with offered prices and any reservations. Our legal argumentation played a vital role in “saving” section 7 (now section 7a). It even got so far that the Danish Minister of Trade and Industry publicly thanked The Danish Construction Federation for “making him wiser”.