Kluwer Construction Blog

Arbitration has become the black sheep of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes in Australia’s domestic sphere.  Over the last two decades arbitration has descended into a costly, rigid and time consuming process.

As noted in my July 2010 blog ‘A return to Arbitration?’, Australia’s domestic arbitration regime is currently the subject of legislative reform with each state and territory agreeing to adopt the Model Law. 

This raises the questions:

• will adoption of the Model Law improve the effectiveness of arbitration as an ADR process and make it a more attractive ADR option, or
• will its success depend on arbitrators taking full advantage of the new legislative framework in managi [...]

Acronyms abound in the wide world of project delivery methods – D&C, DCM, ECI, EPC, EPCM. The list goes on. Even for those of us out there who speak the ‘lingo’, it can get quite confusing.

Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) and Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management (EPCM) contracts are two project delivery methods commonly used in the mining, mineral processing and power industries. Despite the widespread use of these contract models, there remains a general level of mystification associated with EPCM contracts, and the distinction between EPC and EPCM contracts is not particularly well documented or understood.

In acronym alone, the two contract models appear [...]

Those of you involved in cross-border sale of goods will probably know that a new version of Incoterms takes effect on 1 January 2011. Incoterms (or international commerce terms) are a series of international sales terms published by International Chamber of Commerce and widely used in international commercial transactions.

There are some significant differences between Incoterms 2000 and the new Incoterms 2010. Some of the changes will need to be incorporated into new sale of goods contracts entered into before 1 January 2011; other changes simply need to be understood and considered when preparing contracts effective on or after 1 January 2011.

 What needs to be done before 1 January 2010 [...]

Without doubt, technology has helped develop a truly global legal community, and lawyers today routinely work with clients around the world.

It is natural, therefore, that parties in contract negotiations would rely on technology to find changes in the document being negotiated, particularly where proposing amendments and developing clauses.

In the past, we would rely on the other side to direct us to amended clauses in a contract or to relay the substance of the proposed or incorporated amendment. In some instances, we would have to read the document from top to bottom to identify each and every change.

Today, thanks to technology, we rely on ‘track changes’ or compare software which [...]

Court resources are scarce. This is a universal truth, although no one seems to have cracked the code that will solve the problem.

The answer may be as simple as alternative dispute resolution. Sensible commercial parties have always engaged in ADR and more and more jurisdictions around the world are promoting a culture where you can’t expect your day in court until you have tried to sort out your dispute yourself.

But can ADR really be forced on to potential litigants?

Although ADR has been promoted in different ways in different countries, the aim has always been the same – to reduce legal costs, increase efficiency, bring about a cultural change and free up limited court resources. [...]

Perhaps because we live ‘Down Under’, Australians have always been somewhat contrarian. We like our beer cold, for example, and play our favourite game of football with a pointy ball instead of a round one.

So while the past ten years have provided an interesting economic backdrop for players in the construction industry – with the world economy moving from boom to near bust to (hopefully) better times ahead – for most of those years Australia’s construction industry simply surged ahead, even during the global economic downturn of 2008/2009.

Nonetheless, changes in the economy did lead to changes in how projects are delivered in Australia. Which begs the question – how has project d [...]

Disputes in the construction industry have historically lent themselves to the utilisation of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes. During the boom times of the late nineties and early noughties, parties to construction contracts focussed less on hard dollar contracts and strict legal claims, and more on relationship based contracting and dispute avoidance, such that reliance on more formal ADR fell away.