For many years now, the Technology and Construction Bar Association (“TECBAR”) has administered ADR panels of its members in the fields of arbitration, adjudication, mediation and dispute resolution boards. Construction adjudication, of course, has been a central feature of ADR for 15 years and as members of the Adjudication Society are well aware there have been a large number of TCC judgments in adjudication enforcement proceedings (which have both simplified the workings of the process in some areas and arguably complicated it in others).
Calum Lamont
We are all familiar with the saying that adjudication is a rough and ready process.
Those involved in adjudication (whether as participants, advisors or adjudicators themselves) are equally familiar with the Court’s often irresistible urge to enforce adjudicator’s decisions and the Court’s general suspicion of technical or procedural challenges to undermine an award with which one party is dissatisfied.
Ever since the decision of the Technology and Construction Court in Picardi v Cuniberti [2003] BLR 487, employers who enjoy “residential occupier” status within the meaning of s.106 Housing Grants Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 have attempted to evade the consequences of an unfavourable contractual adjudication by complaining that the whole process was “unfair”. This is not altogether surprising.
It is perhaps not surprising that there has been a recent upturn in adjudication business, both substantively and in the Courts. In the context of economic uncertainty, contractors will be understandably concerned that financial shortfalls on a particular project (however small) may not be absorbed by the next job. It may be the case that there will not be a next job at all.