Monthly Archives: June 2011

REUTERS | Russell Boyce
June 29, 2011

June 2011 digest: JCT contract changes and the rain

As Benjamin Disraeli said in 1867:

“Change is inevitable. In a progressive country change is constant.”

June has been a month of changes, not only with shifts in the weather (obviously, Wimbledon started, and everyone knows it nearly always rains during Wimbledon), but also with details of the changes to the industry’s main suite of standard forms of contract.

We may not have a confirmed effective date for the Construction Act 1996 amendments, but people are preparing gradually. The JCT has published tracked change documents, and we have written notes on the design and build, standard and intermediate contracts, telling you about the key differences between the JCT’s 2009 revisions and the 2011 editions. (CIMAR is changing too!) Schedules of amendments to these will follow and, in the meantime, we have updated all our maintained materials accordingly. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Ricardo Moraes
June 29, 2011

Infrastructure in the new era

Infrastructure in the New Era is published by Constructing Excellence and Pinsent Masons.

Over the past twelve months, together with Constructing Excellence, we have been examining how the infrastructure sector has made better progress than many other sectors in reforming, improving and modernising its approach to the delivery of major infrastructure assets.

We sought the views and opinions of over 70 chief executives and other senior executives from clients, consultants, contractors and suppliers, including Infrastructure UK (IUK) and the government. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Andrew Winning
June 28, 2011

When the adjudicator gets it wrong

I recently read a paper by Edwards-Stuart J, published by the SCL. He called it “When the adjudicator gets it horribly wrong” and discussed what options, such as CPR Part 8, are available to parties when an adjudicator makes a “fundamental mistake”. Edwards-Stuart J cited three examples of adjudicator mistakes:

  • Adopting an incorrect method of calculation.
  • Attributing a sum of money to the wrong party.
  • Leaving something out of the calculations.

I was still pondering his words and the nature of these “fundamental mistakes” when, a few days later, I read Edwards-Stuart J’s judgment in Urang v Century and Eclipse. Among other things, this judgment was concerned with an alleged mistake by the same adjudicator in two separate adjudications. The three parties involved (same referring party (Urang), different responding parties (Century and Eclipse)) had agreed to have matters heard together as the issues were almost identical. Continue reading →

REUTERS |
June 22, 2011

Government Construction Strategy: something new or same old same old?

Last week I went to a presentation at the Centre for Construction Innovation to hear Paul Meigh talk about the Government Construction Strategy. Paul is the deputy director for construction and efficiency reform in the Cabinet Office and introduced himself as the “the officer responsible for publication of the paper”. (The Chief Construction Adviser, Paul Morrell, is the architect behind the paper and Paul indicated that many have contributed to its content including industry, private and public representatives.)

Continue reading →

REUTERS | Adrees Latif
June 21, 2011

Where have all the adjudication enforcement cases gone?

Up until last week (Friday to be exact), it had been almost 60 days since the TCC published one of its adjudication enforcement judgments on BAILII (and I’m excluding the second Lanes Group’s judgment simply because it was published late, came out of sequence and was pretty much covered in the first judgment).

60 days is a long time for someone who writes a weekly column on a topic like adjudication. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Pillar Lee
June 15, 2011

An adjudicator’s skills

How often do you wonder about the skills an adjudicator has and think “I bet those skills are really useful in other spheres of dispute resolving”?

I imagine most people don’t give much thought to my question and I can see why that may be. However, I don’t think it has always been this way. Once upon a time, when statutory adjudication was the new kid on the block, I bet when most people were confronted with their first adjudication dispute, or were wondering whether to name someone as the adjudicator in a contract, they looked at a list of names they were familiar with from their experiences of arbitration or mediation, and wondered whether those same people would be any good at adjudication. In those early days, the adjudicator-nominating bodies (ANBs) had drawn up lists of names, but a large number of those names were unfamiliar to most people. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Toby Melville
June 14, 2011

Economic loss: it’s just common sense

Whenever the law is unable to provide firm guidelines on a given matter, judges seem to fall back on that great legal cop out: it’s a matter of “common sense” or it is “fair and reasonable”. No area do they seem to rely on this more than in the law of tort or, more precisely, when dealing with the question of pure economic loss (when no physical damage or injury has been caused to people or other property).

The Court of Appeal (which included Jackson LJ), had the opportunity to give their thoughts on this issue in Conarken and Farrell v Network Rail Infrastructure. The facts giving rise to the claim, we are told at the beginning of the judgment, are “quite frequent”. So there must be a simple answer? Wrong… Continue reading →

REUTERS | Yuriko Nakao
June 10, 2011

Construction experts’ expertise and its regulation after Jones v Kaney

Much has been written about the anticipated impact that the Supreme Court’s decision in Jones v Kaney will have on expert witnesses and the evidence they give, whether they will need to change their behaviour in court or in the way they write their reports. Going forward, without the protection of expert immunity, it will be important that expert witnesses are aware that they are potentially liable to their clients for a breach of duty, even where the work relates to preparation for or involvement in legal proceedings. Continue reading →

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