FIDIC glossary · Payments
Final Statement
Final Statement
In short
The Contractor’s statement at completion to finally determine the amounts due (Clause 14).
What is a Final Statement?
The Final Statement is the document with which the Contractor closes out the financial side of the contract. It is submitted after the Performance Certificate is issued, usually within 56 days.
The process has two stages. First the Contractor submits a draft final statement, the parties discuss it, and the Engineer may require changes. Then the Final Statement itself is submitted — in agreed form — together with a written discharge.
That discharge is where the risk sits. By signing it the Contractor states that the Final Statement represents full and final settlement under the contract. After that, bringing anything else is close to impossible.
So the rule is simple: **everything you intend to claim must be in the Final Statement**. Open claims, disputed amounts, matters before the DAAB — either include them or expressly carve them out of the discharge. A tacit "we'll sort it later" does not work here.
The reverse also holds: the process closes out the Employer's claims too. After the Final Payment Certificate the Employer is constrained in what it can raise — save for latent defects, fraud and gross negligence.
Practical advice: start assembling the final account positions long before the project ends, not when the Performance Certificate arrives.
Where it sits in the contract
Related terms
Need this read against your own contract?
This explains how the mechanism works in the standard form. How it works in your contract, after the Particular Conditions, is a separate question.
Talk to an expert →A reference explanation of the FIDIC standard conditions. Not legal advice, and not a reproduction of the FIDIC books.