Cooperation through clarity Designing simplified contracts

This paper reports a case study of an innovative contract simplification project. The context is an energy industry facility to be built in northwestern British Columbia, Canada, where it is important to gain social license from Aboriginal communities by sharing employment opportunities. However, the complexity of contract documentation was seen as a barrier to local small contractors. This project transformed a complex document set by using principles of clear information design, both at the structural and detailed level. The principles used are explained in the form of a pattern library that lists potential solutions to common communication problems for contract documentation.