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EDITORIAL
Adjudication
Peter Fenn
Senior Lecturer, University of Manchester, P.O. Box 88,
ManchesterM60, 1QD, U.K. E-mail: [email protected]
Michael OShea
Partner, Wragge and Co., Birmingham B3 2AS, U.K. E-mail:
[email protected]
This is the second part of a Special Issue; the response to our
call
for papers was so great that we had to divide the papers into
two
groups to match the journals budgeted page numbers. When we
proposed the Special Issue, we did it against a backdrop of
the
Housing Grants Construction and Regeneration Act 1996
HGCRA of England and Wales. That act introduced adjudica-tion as
a first-tier method of dispute resolution in all relevant
construction contracts. This major step represented an
extraordi-nary legislative intervention. It was also an opportunity
for em-
pirical study and data in an area dominated by anecdote and
hearsay. Enforcement, procedural, and jurisdictional issues
relat-
ing to adjudications or decisions made by adjudicators have
pro-
duced a large body of case law. In addition, the statutory
changes
created the role of adjudicator and offered a new career path
for
many construction professionals.
We knew that adjudication had become a statutorily imposed
method of dispute resolution in the U.K.and we suspectedin
different forms in New Zealand, Singapore, several states of
Aus-
tralia, and the United States.
We hoped that papers might explain the position around the
world and add to the debate about construction dispute
resolution.
That aim has been achieved; the papers report on more than
nine
countries over the two Special Issues. The papers included in
this
Special Issue are mixed: some are research papers in the
usual
ASCE sense, some are research papers in the legal sense, and
we
hope that some will help answer that old question, What is
dif-
ferent or special about construction?
Nicholas Gould and Charlene Linneman, solicitors specializ-
ing in the field, describe the Adjudication Society and the
volume
of case law regarding enforcement of adjudication decisions
and
clarifications of procedural issues.
Mair Coombes Davies, another barrister, describes adjudica-
tion outside construction: adjudication for consumer
disputes.
This paper first explores some of the differences, using as
an
illustration of consumer adjudication the Communications and
In-
ternet Services SchemeCISAS. Second, it looks forward to how
the advantages of both may combine to produce more effective
dispute resolution with consistently high standards for
resolving
differences between parties, ensuring that disputes are always
ef-
fectively and efficiently investigated while streamlining
proce-
dures so that they are easy to use, transparent, and
cost-effective.
Timothy Hill and Colin Wall wonder Why No Adjudication
in Hong Kong. When discussing the absence of adjudication in
Hong Kong, it is worth remembering that, amid all the
hyperbole
about adjudication, some industries in the U.K. successfully
lob-
bied to stay out of the legislation. Other areas, countries,
includ-
ing Hong Kong, have avoided the rush to adjudication.
Richard Anderson argues that good ideas are often overtaken
by great events. That happened to adjudication. Originally
envis-
aged as a single concept applying across the U.K., it has
been
overtaken by more significant constitutional change. This
paper
takes a look at that process. Something of a parallel could
perhaps
be drawn with the individual states in the United States
each
introducing a similar form of legislation. The possibility
exists, of
course, of each area adopting a different approach, but the
indi-
cations are that certain communality is developing in
adjudication
and that it is perhaps a measure of the success of the concept
of
adjudication that adopting it other dependency areas, such as
the
Isle of Man, are voluntarily.
Mohamed Marzouk, Ahmed El-Dokhmasey, and Moheeb El-Said report
on the sources of construction delays and the devel-
opment of a knowledge-based expert system dedicated to
engineering-related delays. The authors discuss claim
entitlement,
responsibility, and compensability of claims. A case study is
pre-
sented to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed expert
sys-
tem.
Since the authors first wrote their papers, developments
have
continued apace, and some authors asked that their papers be
considered in that light.
JOURNAL OF PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND
PRACTICE ASCE / JULY 2008 / 297
J. Prof. Issues Eng. Educ. Pract. 2008.134:297-297.
