Adjudication Advice and Advocacy
We enjoy the focus and intensity of the adjudication process, and the way in which it brings together the parties, their teams, and the adjudicator in a four-week blitz to decide an outcome to a dispute.
We do however caution our clients against over-hasty referral to adjudication. The cost of engaging all of the above people intensively over a 28-day period can be substantial, and this cannot usually be recovered from a losing party. Failure to establish that the adjudicator had proper jurisdiction to decide the dispute referred to him can also render his decision worthless.
We are also noticing that adjudicators are much more reluctant to use their investigatory powers than when the process was first introduced at the end of the 1990s. They are often not meeting the parties, nor are they reading all the papers, and they are dismissing claims a little too easily. If the responding party has had professionals certifying payments, in particular, a challenge may well require expert evidence in support, where before the adjudicator would investigate using his own expertise.
We will, where so instructed, prepare and serve a Notice of Adjudication and Referral with supporting documents, or a Response if our client is the Responding Party. We can recommend architects, engineers and quantity surveyors to join the team where required. If you are responding to a claim, we will work as rapidly as possible with you, your project team, and any experts retained to value the claim and identify any payment that should be made early to limit your exposure to further costs.
We have referred professional negligence claims to adjudication on behalf of clients, and have referred and responded to claims by clients, contractors and subcontractors in relation to defects, delay and payment. We can provide written and oral submissions to the adjudicator on the law and the evidence. If the responding party will not comply with the adjudicator’s decision, we will make the required claim in the Technology and Construction Court, and initiate any further enforcement procedures that may be necessary.
