Construction Law and Dispute Resolution Training Course

Participants can interpret construction clauses and compare the operating logic of leading standard forms.

• Interpretation principles: ordinary meaning, context, commercial purpose and ambiguity
• FIDIC Red Book roles, risk allocation and contract administration procedures
• NEC4 ECC early warning, compensation events and collaborative management
• JCT Design and Build provisions for payment, extensions and loss
• Amendments, special conditions and risks created by poorly drafted clauses
• Reading operative clauses alongside definitions, schedules and technical specifications
• Identify priority clauses affecting time, payment, change and dispute rights

Participants can evaluate contractual risk allocation and the financial protections supporting project performance.

• Risk registers linked to contractual responsibilities and project control actions
• Employer, contractor and shared risks under common construction contract forms
• Ground conditions, design responsibility and fitness-for-purpose obligations
• Force majeure, exceptional events and change-in-law risk treatment
• Performance bonds, advance-payment guarantees and parent-company guarantees explained
• Construction all-risks insurance, professional indemnity and public liability cover
• Indemnities, exclusions and liability caps tested against project scenarios

Participants can operate a contract-administration process that protects rights and creates reliable evidence.

• Notice provisions: timing, form, recipient, content and service requirements
• Notice registers tracking deadlines, responses, reservations and outstanding decisions
• Drafting notices that state events, contractual grounds and relief sought
• Contemporaneous records from site diaries, meeting minutes and daily reports
• Instructions, correspondence and approvals controlled through document-management protocols
• Programme updates used to identify critical-path movement and emerging delay
• Escalation matrices for unresolved instructions, certifications and payment issues

Participants can determine how changes are instructed, valued, certified and disputed under construction contracts.

• Distinguishing variations, defects correction, scope clarification and contractor proposals
• Authority to instruct changes and consequences of unauthorised directions
• Valuation methods: contract rates, analogous rates, dayworks and fair valuation
• Measurement records, daywork sheets and substantiation for changed work
• Payment applications, certification, withholding notices and payment timelines
• Final account procedures, releases and reservation-of-rights correspondence
• Interest, suspension rights and remedies for non-payment assessed

Participants can analyse delay events, establish time entitlement and distinguish delay from disruption claims.

• Baseline programmes, critical paths and contractual programme acceptance requirements
• Extension-of-time clauses, prevention principles and concurrent delay considerations
• Delay analysis methods: impacted-as-planned, time impact and windows analysis
• Critical-path evidence drawn from updates, logic links and progress records
• Disruption claims distinguished from delay through productivity-loss evidence
• Acceleration instructions, constructive acceleration and associated cost recovery
• Liquidated damages, penalty rules and general damages for delay

Participants can manage end-of-project contractual events while protecting completion and remedy rights.

• Practical completion, taking-over certificates and sectional completion consequences
• Defects notification periods, rectification duties and employer remedies
• Completion evidence: testing records, commissioning documents and outstanding works lists
• Suspension rights, procedural requirements and consequences for time and cost
• Termination grounds, cure notices and repudiatory breach principles
• Post-termination valuation, site possession and protection of project assets
• Mitigation duties and preserving evidence after contractual breakdown

Participants can prepare and test a structured construction claim supported by contractual and factual evidence.

• Claim anatomy: event, notice, entitlement, causation, quantum and relief
• Chronologies connecting contractual events, correspondence, records and programme impacts
• Entitlement matrices mapping clauses, facts, evidence and potential defences
• Quantum substantiation using cost records, resource data and valuation methods
• Causation analysis separating compensable impacts from contractor-responsible causes
• Defending claims through notice failures, factual gaps and mitigation evidence
• Claim narratives written for commercial negotiation and formal proceedings

Participants can select and prepare effective early dispute-resolution routes for construction disputes.

• Dispute escalation clauses and mandatory pre-action procedural requirements
• Negotiation preparation using interests, alternatives and settlement authority limits
• Mediation process, confidentiality protections and settlement agreement drafting
• Dispute avoidance and adjudication boards under FIDIC procedures
• Adjudication referrals, response timetables and decision enforcement considerations
• Position papers supported by documents, chronology and targeted legal arguments
• Settlement terms addressing payment, releases, confidentiality and future performance

Participants can plan proportionate formal dispute action and improve project dispute-prevention arrangements.

• Arbitration clauses, institutional rules and seat-of-arbitration implications
• Litigation routes, jurisdictional challenges and court-managed procedural stages
• Expert evidence from delay analysts, quantity surveyors and technical specialists
• Disclosure, witness statements and document preservation duties explained
• Costs, funding, enforcement and settlement risks compared across forums
• Dispute strategy maps aligning objectives, evidence, budget and decision points
• Application plans for improving notices, records and escalation procedures