Disputes in Construction Industry: Owners and Contractors’ Views on Causes and Remedies

The construction industry is prone to conflicts and disputes due to complexity, competitive environment, and complicated project documents. In this complex environment, members from various professions, each has their goals and desires to secure the most of his own benefits, work together to build a structure. The objectives of this study were to investigate the frequency, causes, and remedies of disputes in the Central Province of Saudi Arabia. The required data were collected, through a questionnaire survey, from 130 contractors and 54 owners located in the Central Province. This study reveals that disputes in the Saudi construction industry are inevitable with a frequency of occurrence exceeds two disputes per month. Project documents, owners, and contractors to some extent are the sources for such disputes. Project documents are poorly prepared with inaccurate specifications, ambiguity in contract wording, contradictions between project documents, unrealistic project duration, the inaccurate bell of quantities (BOQ), and weakness in contract language. Owners cause great disputes through sizable variation orders exceeding allowable limits, changing item descriptions and quantities in BOQ, interfering in the execution of the contract, and delaying responses to requested information/approvals. Contractors cause disputes through poor contract administration. Contractors follow a combined strategy (mitigating disputes and holding only the disputed work area only) and owners either mitigate disputes or hold disputed scopes. Government owners mostly mitigating disputes and, conversely, private owners hold the disputed scope and continue with the rest of the project. This study is believed to contribute to the current body of knowledge in disputes and contractors and owners by providing effective mitigation techniques that will assist them in minimizing the negative impacts of disputes.

Smart Contract Data Feed Framework for Privacy-Preserving Oracle System on Blockchain

As blockchain-based applications and research such as cryptocurrency increase, an oracle problem to bring external data in the blockchain is emerging. Among the methods to solve the oracle problem, a method of configuring oracle based on TLS, an existing internet infrastructure, has been proposed. However, these methods currently have the disadvantage of not supporting privacy protection for external data, and there are limitations in configuring the process of a smart contract based on external data verification for automation. To solve this problem, we propose a framework consisting of middleware of external source server, data prover, and verification contract. The framework converts the data signed in the web server into a proof that the owner can prove with zk-SNARKs and provides a smart contract that can verify this. Through these procedures, data owners not only protect their privacy by proving themselves, but they can also automate on-chain processing through smart contract verification. For the proposed framework, we create a proof using libsnark for server data and show the performance and cost to verify with Solidity the smart contract language of the Ethereum platform.

Improvement of legal regulation of foreign economic transactions in the Republic of Uzbekistan

The article deals with issues related to improving the legal regulation of foreign economic transactions in the Republic of Uzbekistan. It is determined that foreign economic transaction is a transaction in which one party is a foreign company or a commercial enterprise located in another state, the trade focused on the import or export abroad and to use in settlements with counterparty foreign currency. It was found out that some types of foreign economic transactions are not reflected in the national legislation of the Republic of Uzbekistan, namely distribute and forfeiting contracts. The article notes that there are various problems associated with the incorrect formation of the terms of foreign economic transactions, their content and requirements, in particular when reflecting the applicable law, the arbitration clause, determining the advantages of the contract language, the application of non-state regulation. It is concluded that it is necessary to regulate the definition of applicable law in relation to certain types of foreign economic transactions that are not reflected in the Сivil code of the Republic of Uzbekistan, namely, in relation to distribution and forfeiting contracts, certain types of foreign economic transactions, internet auctions, internet contests or internet exchanges. Based on the study of foreign experience and scientific and theoretical views, ways to improve legislation in the field of settlement of certain types of foreign economic transactions were investigated. Based on the results of the analysis, relevant conclusions were drawn and proposals were developed for the current legislation.