International statutory adjudication: its development and impact

Abstract

This paper sets out an overview of the development of statutory adjudication, noting its origin in the UK and comparing adjudication in different jurisdictions, including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Africa. Through appraisal of the statistics of case workload referred to different dispute resolution methods, this paper considers the impact this procedure has had upon other dispute resolution processes. From the UK experience, the adoption of a statutory adjudication scheme by any jurisdiction is likely to result in significant reductions in most other forms of dispute resolution.

Keywords:

• Adjudication
• dispute resolution
• arbitration
• construction

Notes

1. Thus, in November 1989 the author represented a subcontractor in the case of Cameron v. John Mowlem 52 BLR 24, and sought summary judgment upon an adjudicator's decision.

2. The Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) linked up with the Institution of Chemical Engineers and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers to form a Process Industries Liaison Group (PILG) that was anxious to ensure that contracts concerned with the process industries, including power stations, should not be subject to the new legislation, on the grounds that such contracts, historically, did not suffer from the oppressive treatment of subcontractors, and the restrictions on their cashflow, as apparently occurred in the civil engineering and building industry. In 1997, the author was one of a number of contributors to a book produced by King's College, Centre of Construction Law and Management, which was sceptical of the new legislation.

3. See the paper by Tomas Kennedy‐Grant, QC, the leading NZ jurist (Kennedy‐Grant, 2005).

4. For full details of the Singapore legislation see Chow (2005).

5. The author is grateful to the TCC staff for these figures.

6. The Times, Law, 26 June 2001, p. 3.

7. The Times, Law, 26 February 2002, p. 3.

8. Appeal Court witnesses fall‐off in civil hearings. The Lawyer, 14 February 2005, p. 4.

9. Construction Law (2001) 12(8) 1.

10. At the Society of Construction Law conference in 2005 at which this paper was originally presented the view of the attendees was that institutional appointments for construction and engineering arbitrations had fallen by much more than a third, but direct appointments of popular and experienced individual arbitrators were more buoyant.

11. LCIA News (2005) 10(1) 3.

12. At the SCA (Society of Construction Arbitrators) 2005 conference presentation of this paper the attendees were generally of the view that expert determinations were usually conducted in a very similar fashion to an arbitration, notwithstanding the theoretical difference in procedure.

13. CEDR statistics from www.cedr.co.uk.

14. Solicitors Journal (2005) 149(11) 307.

15. The material which follows is based on a lecture given by the author at an ICC conference on 14 October 2004.

16. Morrison (2005).