Construction disputes and contract strategy grounded in project experience

On a major sewerage and wastewater infrastructure project under a FIDIC-based contract, the Contractor faced a complex delay situation that could not be explained by one isolated event. The project was affected by late access and possession of the Site, delayed work permits, errors in original survey points, delayed approval of construction materials, late drawings and instructions, and delayed processing of Variation Orders.

The Contractor had issued numerous claim notices during the life of the project. However, notices alone do not recover time or cost. The real challenge was to convert a fragmented project history into a coherent, evidence-based claim that the Engineer could properly assess and determine.

My contribution was to transform that scattered record into a structured contractual case. I prepared the Contractor’s interim overall claim for Extension of Time and additional payment by organising the events into a clear chronology, identifying the relevant Employer Risk Events, linking each event to the applicable FIDIC provisions, and demonstrating how the delays affected the critical path and completion date.

The claim was not built as a general complaint about delay. It was built around entitlement, causation, delay analysis, and quantum review. Each major event was connected to the contract, the programme, the project correspondence, and the supporting records. The prolongation cost claim was then presented through time-related cost components, including site office overheads, head office overheads, financing charges, retention-related financing costs, and profit where contractually applicable.

The outcome was commercially significant. The Engineer determined that the Contractor was entitled to 100% of the additional EOT sought, granting 382 days and moving the completion date. The Engineer also determined that more than half of the claimed prolongation-related costs assessed in the determination were due to the Contractor, subject to the Engineer’s own corrections and deductions.

For the Contractor, the value was not only the time and cost recognised. The greater value was strategic: the claim reduced a complicated project history into a clear, contractually grounded, evidence-led case capable of determination.

In construction claims, delay alone does not create entitlement. Records do. Causation does. Contractual logic does. A successful claim does not merely say that the project was late — it proves why it was late, who carried the risk, and what relief follows.

In a FIDIC Yellow Book dispute, I was appointed as Sole Member of the Dispute Adjudication Board to decide a contractor’s referral concerning price adjustment and cost escalation on a major design-build project.

The dispute raised a difficult contractual and legal issue. The Contract contained fixed-price language and excluded the automatic cost-adjustment mechanism under Sub-Clause 13.8. At the same time, the Contractor relied on statutory entitlement under the governing law, arguing that extraordinary increases in the cost elements forming the Contract Price justified a price adjustment.

The adjudication required more than simply choosing between two commercial positions. It required a structured decision on admissibility, jurisdiction, contract interpretation, governing law, entitlement, and quantum.

My contribution as DAB Sole Member was to manage the process fairly and independently, while keeping the dispute decision-ready. After the Contractor submitted its referral, the Employer did not file a detailed Statement of Defence. Rather than treating that silence as enough to accept the claim, I gave both Parties a fair opportunity to clarify their positions, confirmed the documents-only procedure, and requested additional documents where the record required greater clarity.

The key issue was whether the Contract should be treated as fixed for cost escalation purposes, and if so, whether the Contractor still retained a statutory right to price adjustment under the governing law. The decision analysed the hierarchy of contract documents, the Schedule of Prices, the exclusion of Sub-Clause 13.8, FIDIC commentary, Serbian law, and the evidence supporting the price-adjustment calculation.

On quantum, the calculation was independently reviewed rather than accepted at face value. The analysis considered the relevant price elements, indices, base date, non-adjustable portions, provisional sums, dayworks, overhead, profit, and the threshold required under the applicable statutory rule.

The result was a reasoned, binding DAB decision confirming the admissibility of the claim and determining the Contractor’s entitlement to a price adjustment under the applicable legal route.

For the Parties, the value of the adjudication was not only the decision itself. The greater value was that a complex FIDIC dispute was reduced to a clear, structured, contractually and legally reasoned outcome that the Parties could act upon.

In FIDIC adjudication, speed matters — but speed without discipline is dangerous. A reliable decision must be fair, reasoned, evidence-based, and capable of standing under later scrutiny.

In an arbitration concerning a construction project, the dispute turned on a technically demanding question: whether the Contractor was entitled to recover a price difference caused by increases in the cost elements forming the original contract rates.

Both parties appointed experts. Both experts dealt with the same core issue. But the real dispute was not simply whether prices had increased — it was how the increase should be measured, which assumptions should be applied, and which calculation could be safely relied upon by the Tribunal.

My role was to provide expert evidence on the price-difference calculation. I analysed the contractual bill of quantities, unit rates, cost elements, interim payment records, relevant published indices, and the competing methodology advanced by the opposing expert. The objective was not to produce the largest possible number. The objective was to produce a calculation that was transparent, technically reasoned, and capable of being tested.

My contribution became especially important after the exchange of expert reports and the oral hearing. The Tribunal ordered further expert analysis requiring multiple calculation scenarios, including variables based on the opposing expert’s methodology. In response, I prepared an additional expert report showing how the result changed under different assumptions: base date, treatment of profit, treatment of advance payment, and other disputed variables.

This changed the character of the dispute. Instead of leaving the Tribunal with two competing expert positions, the analysis gave the Tribunal a clear map of the financial consequences of each assumption. The decision-maker could compare the alternatives, isolate the real points of disagreement, and select the calculation it considered appropriate.

The Tribunal ultimately awarded approximately 61% of the claimed amount. More importantly, the Tribunal used one of the calculation variables presented in my additional expert report as the basis for determining the price-difference amount.

For the client, the value was not only the amount awarded. The greater value was that the expert evidence gave the Tribunal a practical and reliable route through a dense quantum dispute.

In expert evidence, credibility is not created by volume. It is created by independence, method, clarity, and the ability to show the decision-maker exactly how each assumption changes the result.

On a major sewerage infrastructure project under a FIDIC-based contract, what began as a construction claim eventually became a full international arbitration. The dispute moved through several stages: claim preparation for the Engineer, multiple referrals to the Dispute Board, and finally UNCITRAL arbitration proceedings seated in a neutral jurisdiction.

My involvement followed the dispute across that full lifecycle. I first supported the preparation of the Contractor’s claim for Extension of Time and prolongation costs. When the dispute escalated, I continued supporting the Contractor through five Dispute Board referrals. Later, as co-counsel in the arbitration, I worked with the legal team to protect the position already built through the claim and Dispute Board process.

The arbitration was not simply a rehearing of the project history. The real challenge was to defend the contractual route that had been followed: the Engineer’s determination, the binding effect of Dispute Board Decisions, the consequences of non-payment, the limits of the Tribunal’s jurisdiction, and the Respondent’s attempt to reopen issues that had either not been properly brought before the Tribunal or had not been substantiated with evidence.

My contribution was to help maintain a clear and consistent case theory across all stages of the dispute. The case had to show not only that amounts were due, but that the procedural path to those amounts had been properly preserved. This required connecting the original claim records, the Engineer’s determinations, the Dispute Board referrals, the Notices of Dissatisfaction, payment certificates, contractual time bars, jurisdictional objections, and quantum consequences into one coherent arbitration narrative.

The Tribunal ultimately declined to open up, review, or revise the relevant Dispute Board Decisions pursued in the arbitration and ordered the Employer to give effect to them. The award confirmed the amounts due under those decisions, together with further financing charges and arbitration costs.

For the Contractor, the value was not created only at the final hearing. It was created much earlier — by preparing the claim properly, preserving the procedural route, presenting the referrals coherently, and then carrying the same disciplined logic into arbitration.

In construction arbitration, the case is rarely won by documents alone. It is won by turning those documents into a clear theory of entitlement, procedure, causation, and relief — and preserving that theory from the first claim to the final award.