Peter Gracia on bonanza time for adjudicators – but the rest of the industry might feel differently.
The fact that the number of adjudications is definitely on the up is great news for those of us who like arguing but not such good news for those who want the project budget to spent on silly things like bricks and mortar.
The adjudication scene has been picking up steadily over the past couple of years as all that cut-throat bidding by contractors results in lots of arguments. As a RICS main panel adjudicator I get to see the figures coming out of the Dispute Resolution Service – ie the number of requests the DRS receives to nominate an adjudicator to a dispute – which I set out for you in general terms below.
- 2010: 674
- 2011: 641
- 2012: 780
- 2013: 816
- First six months of 2014: 633
Way back in 1999, just after the Construction Act hit the mat, I wrote a piece for Building magazine on the first 100 adjudications the company I then worked for had undertaken. Today we are seeing an uptick in adjudications and one of the great drivers of that is that strange pile of papers called the NEC3, which people insist on using as a contract.
Dispute resolution boys and girls simply love NEC3 as it makes more disputes than fish can make bubbles. Please help us poor adjudicators, arbitrators and lawyers out and keep on using it, particularly for international projects…
Far too many contractors have been chasing work over the past couple of years and committed to projects they just could not do for too low a price. Also that partnering malarkey has gone out of the window as people realised they could no longer afford to pay some consultant to run a darts night so that everyone could bond. But there is no point in the team bonding if the designer does not know which way up the building is supposed to be.
In all seriousness, the RICS figures are a solid indicator of what is going on as no other appointing body comes close to its market penetration or number of appointments. The staff there run a tight ship but have been happy to assist with releasing these figures, so a big thank you to them.
Peter Gracia FCIOB FCIArb FQSI is director of Gracia Consult
