International Construction Law Review
INTRODUCTION
CHANTAL-AIMÉE DOERRIES KC
PROFESSOR DOUGLAS S JONES AO
The construction sector presently confronts a convergence of pressures that test the limits of long accepted legal processes: projects of an unprecedented scale and sophistication generate vast and complex volumes of evidence, and contractual regimes designed for certainty often now produce procedural traps that amplify delay and costs. These forces combine to make dispute resolution not merely slower and more expensive, but also harder to predict with confidence. Our contributors respond to this with analyses and recommendations that show how dispute resolution procedure, and project practice can be recalibrated so procedural fairness and legal certainty can be preserved, while dispute resolution and contract administration become more efficient and less costly. They approach this task from different angles, such as doctrinal critique and comparative policy analysis, and the result is a collection that is both diagnostically rich and practically oriented.
We begin with a tribute to one of the founders of the International Construction Law Review, David Wightman, who has sadly passed away. His passing is mourned across the international construction law community. His editorial vision, insistence on comparative rigour and generosity to emerging scholars helped shape this Review to the indispensable forum in international construction law that it is today. Wightman’s spirit of stewardship and cross-border conversation informs the practical and reform-minded pieces that follow.
Peter Clayton and Dr Andrew Agapiou set the substantive tone in, Optimising UK Adjudication: Efficiency Gains from Overseas, by distilling adjudication in the UK down to its basic principles and then testing those principles against international practice. They conclude that the UK’s Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act’s adjudication regime has functioned well to deliver speedy dispute resolution and interim relief. Nevertheless, by drawing comparisons to the experience of New South Wales and other security‑of‑payment regimes, the authors explore whether statutory claim and response mechanisms standardised procedural rules, and calibrated limits on what may be adduced in an adjudication could reduce transaction costs and the frequency of enforcement litigation in the UK. The authors do not propose a complete overhaul of the current system of adjudication, rather they propose an array of reforms, including express statutory claim formats and time-bound responses, and evaluate each reform against the pivotal criteria of efficiency and fairness.
In, Notice Provisions: A Modern Cult Lacking Balance?, Dr Franco Mastrandrea invites the reader to consider the clause-level mechanics of notice provisions. He argues that notice provisions have become a modern cult: worshipped for their project management virtues, yet simultaneously capable of producing draconian forfeiture outcomes when applied
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