Contentious and non-contentious construction for housebuilders

We deal with all aspects of both contentious and non-contentious construction matters for housebuilder clients.

Construction

The team regularly advises national and regional housebuilders on procurement strategies and the structure of project documents. We work closely with our residential development team to ensure that construction obligations agreed or imposed within development management agreements, funding agreements, joint venture and collaboration agreements are successfully delivered through the building contract, professional appointments and collateral warranties.

We provide advice on all versions of the more commonly used JCT and NEC forms of contract and are equally experienced in using and advising on less common forms of contract including the PPC2000, IChemE and FIDIC forms of contract. Our transactional work includes advising housebuilders on the drafting and updating of standard and bespoke construction documentation including building contracts, framework arrangements for plot developments, consultants’ appointments and sub-contract terms and conditions.

Contentious construction 

Our contentious construction team is one of the biggest in the UK and handles the full range of contentious construction work including claims concerning defective works, professional negligence claims, payment disputes and delay-related issues. We provide advice in relation to all forms of dispute resolution procedures including mediation, adjudication, arbitration, litigation and more informal methods.

We are routinely instructed on adjudications, both referring and defending disputes. We often undertake fixed fee adjudication work and can give discount for bulk adjudication cases. We are advocates of alternative dispute resolution in the right cases, whether that is by way of mediation, expert determination or conciliation. A number of our partners are accredited mediators.

Where adjudication is unsuitable and claims are not resolved through the pre-action protocol process, we are often instructed to run High Court litigation claims on behalf of housebuilders. We have brought and defended claims in all types of construction, engineering and technical disputes especially before the Technology and Construction Courts, varying from simple building claims to complex specialist technical claims, which in turn range from relatively small value claims to multi-million pound and multi-party disputes.