Low-value claims adjudication has become an increasingly intricate process, particularly for small subcontractors and individuals lacking legal expertise. This post delves into key factors influencing complexity in low-value claims adjudication, as outlined in our recent academic article commended in the 2023 Brooking Prize by Society of Construction Law Australia.
Legalese-Laden Legislation:
A significant hurdle identified by study participants is the legalese-laden nature of the Security of Payment (SOP) Act, creating barriers for claimants. The complexity of legal language and excessive details within the legislation poses a challenge for average builders and subcontractors. The study reveals that approximately 75% of claims require legal guidance due to misunderstandings, leading to potential invalidations. However, perspectives differ on whether this complexity acts as a substantial barrier, with some attributing it to contractors’ unwillingness to engage with the Act, while others highlight the necessity of legal professionals to navigate its intricacies.
Lawyer & Court Involvement:
The involvement of legal professionals introduces another layer of complexity. The superseded WA Act, for instance, is criticised for its appeal process, resulting in multiple court appeals, significant legal fees, and delays. Divergent court rulings and inconsistent decisions, as highlighted in Southern Han Breakfast Point v Lewence Construction [2016] HCA 52, further complicate the adjudication landscape. Participants express concerns that court challenges undermine the Act’s aim of facilitating swift resolutions, while others view legalistic processes as necessary for clarity and amendments.
Procedural Rigidity:
The stringent procedural requirements of the adjudication process emerge as a significant concern for participants. The risk of invalidated claims due to jurisdictional issues is particularly pronounced for smaller subcontractors, who may struggle with the numerous requirements within limited timeframes. Participants emphasise the need for clarity on valid reference dates and the risk of minor administrative errors leading to invalidated claims. Participants also point to the systemic challenges arising from procedural rigidity, including the impact of rigid timeframes for serving payment claims and lodging adjudication applications.
Conclusion:
The complexities surrounding low-value claims adjudication demand a nuanced understanding of the legislative landscape, legal involvement, and procedural rigidity. As the construction industry grapples with these challenges, stakeholders must engage in informed discussions to streamline the adjudication process, ensuring accessibility and fairness for all parties involved. This post serves as a starting point for navigating the labyrinth of complexities within the low-value claims adjudication domain, shedding light on the perspectives of industry experts and the potential avenues for improvement.
In the complex landscape of construction contracts, the termination for the Principal’s convenience is a critical area for contractors to understand. This post aims to illuminate your rights as a Contractor in such situations and guide you through navigating the process both legally and professionally. …
With the unprecedented outbreak of the coronavirus across the globe, many universities and schools have been initiating projects to transform their operations from ‘face to face’ to virtual environments aided by various technologies. This call seems to be inevitable since the outbreak will continue to evolve for at least another six months. In this context, three demanding questions come into play:
1) What are the available technological tools that can be fit for this purpose?
2) How to use the tools more effectively in order to provide the same level of quality education and maintain student engagement?
3) What are the success factors of a seamless transformation project?
This article is timely as it addresses the three questions and demonstrates practical tips to help educators transform ‘face to face’ operations into a more swift, effective and integrated online education. The tips can also be applicable to businesses planning for work-from-home arrangement.
There are many tools available to facilitate online education. In this article, five reliable tools are selected to serve this purpose: Zoom, Mentimeter, Asana, Google Drive and Microsoft Team. Many other tools with similar functions are also available. The following section demonstrates how each of the selected tools should be used by educators for effective online delivery that has the potential to mimic the traditional face to face setting:
1- Main classes:
One of the main sources of learning comes from the scheduled ‘face to face’ classes or meetings where the content is taught via a lecture style. Zoom is a great reliable platform to gather all students in a similar space, yet virtual. Zoom offers various plans to suit specific requirements such as large classes but the free version would be enough for many educators. The recording of the presentation can then be made available to students to access online. In addition, Zoom has a few engagement tools such as polls and chatrooms which makes it a bit tricky if the student engagement is a priority for educators. Therefore, a student response system such as Mentimeter can overcome this limitation and boost the engagement of students to its maximum potential.
Mentimeter is an interactive presentation tool that helps an educator upload the static PowerPoint slides into an online platform and add interactive questions in the form of a bar chart, Likert scale, word cloud, quiz format, etc. Students can then connect to the slides using a six-digit code from any device connected to the internet and engage with the content. The tool provides students with the opportunity of posing anonymous questions at any point of time during the live presentation. The tool can also be used to develop forms to collect certain information such as taking attendance.
2- Tutorials and group activities
Regular tutorials or workshops are usually offered as additional support to reinforce learning and encourage collaboration among students. As such, group activities are the most common pedagogical strategy to serve that purpose. In an online environment, Zoom’s Breakout Rooms can help organise those sessions. The educator, who will be the host of the Zoom session, can provide a brief about the activity at the beginning then split the attendees into random or customised groups. Each group will be assigned a separate session. Then, the host can join each group in their private sessions upon request to provide them with assistance. At the end of the group sessions, attendees will automatically go back to the main session.
3- Assessment tasks
It is challenging to stimulate students to genuinely undertake coursework assessments in an online setting unless measures are put in place to mimic the on-campus learning experience. Online tutorials, as explained above, are a good avenue to engage and support students in undertaking assessments. Many assessments are devised as group-based assessments to foster collaboration and polish interpersonal skills. Therefore, Asana can be used as an effective online platform for group management. The free version of the tool is enough to engage basic project management processes. The tool helps the team plan work, assign activities, manage progress and hit deadlines. Educators can be invited to join each group within Asana platform to monitor progress and provide feedback if needed. Google Drive can also be used to develop the collaborative assignment whereas a folder can be created and shared amongst group members so they can contribute their parts in one space. An educator may request a group to join the collaborative folder if there are concerns about academic integrity.
Other forms of summative assessments, such as exams, would attract more rigorous and expensive measures to move online in order to maintain academic integrity. Face recognition technology may be suitable to serve this purpose.
4- Learning content
Many learning management systems such as Moodle and Blackboard include course learning materials and discussion forums but none of them provides real-time communications and dynamic content that would be a basic feature in an online setting. Therefore, Microsoft Team can keep students informed of all ongoing activities in a certain course and support real-time conversations with their educators and peers in a friendly and informal environment. This tool boosts up collaboration and communication that are key success factors for effective pedagogy.
Success factors
All those tools are user-friendly, affordable and fit for purpose. Students can access and use them via their mobile phones. They can also receive instant notifications of updates if applicable. The tools can significantly help educators mimic the ‘face to face’ learning environment and overcome the traditional challenges of online delivery such as student disengagement, poor communication and compromised attainment of learning outcomes. That being said, the tools may experience temporary glitches, especially with the unprecedented demand in the wake of the coronavirus. This would require a contingency plan in place.
Before moving online, the digital literacy skills of both educators and students remain as a critical success factor. Therefore, a mandatory induction would be needed. Afterwards, tailored training for educators should be scheduled to provide continual professional development to improve their digital literacy. For an average user, it may take one hour of self-training online to get started with each tool. The learning curve can then rise exponentially after the first few hours of using any of those tools.
Transformation into an online operation may be a hectic and overwhelming project which may require a pilot testing before mass implementation. However, engaging project management tools and techniques will foster effective and seamless transformation whereas most uncertainties can be eliminated as early as possible. This will of-course require adequate scoping and preparation time. Therefore, it is important to make a start now and it is never too late to be agile and responsive to the ongoing devastating impact of the coronavirus.
An interactive oral presentation by Dr Samer Skaik at the 2018 National Conference of Society of Construction Law Australia in Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia. The presentation will make it simple for you to fully understand the concept of project management and how to apply a simple methodology to manage projects in any discpline not only law firms.
Very recently, I have launched a channel on Youtube. This channel aims to provide integrated, handy and focused educational materials for those interested in developing their competencies in construction project management, professional practice and leadership. My aim is to help raise the bar by providing sound, solid and up-to-date knowledge for students, graduates and professionals in the construction sector. The channel, in addition to the videos, includes other interesting educational playlists. You can display the playlists chronologically if you are keen to develop a robust understanding in the field and advance progressively towards mastering the subject. …
The FIDIC Middle East Contract Users’ Conference in Dubai is your opportunity to gain exclusive analysis and best practice guidance on the three new FIDIC contracts.
In order to provide accurate and balanced information, the FIDIC Contracts Committee will be joined by distinguished professionals and contract users from across the region and will also be delivering insights on successfully using the full FIDIC Suite, managing major projects, mitigating risks and resolving disputes in the Middle East. …
Many construction practitioners in Australia face difficulties in understanding the mechanism of the Statutory Adjudication and how it differs from a State to another. While it is important to point out that the Australian Acts are different, there are a number of common mechanisms. Typically, a person entitled to a progress payment for carrying out construction work (or supplying related goods and services) had to seek recovery of any unpaid amounts via lengthy legal proceedings in arbitration or court. As such, parliament enacted the Security of Payment (SoP) legislation to protect the rights of such persons and facilitate rapid recovery of due payment. The SoP legislation provides statutory rights enabling quick and inexpensive recovery of progress payment for any subcontractor or supplier performing construction works or supplying related goods and services. To facilitate these rights, the SoP introduced a rapid adjudication process to resolve payments disputes. …
The UAE is one of the fastest-growing economies, where the construction industry is the third-largest sector after oil and trade. More than 6,000 construction companies operate in the country, with most construction activities taking place in the emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
The emergence of the industry in the UAE dates back to the 1950s in Dubai when Sheikh Saaed bin Maktoum, together with his son Rashid, decided to transform the emirate into a ‘permanent haven for coastal shipping’ and launched the Dubai Creek improvement project. The construction industry’s growth rate is expected to remain positive, as a result of increased government expenditure on developing infrastructure and industrial construction in the country. …
If your team would benefit from detailed and intensive guidance on all the key aspects of international construction and engineering law then you might want to take a look at the annual Construction Law Summer School.
2016 sessions include: FIDIC; NEC3; termination & insolvency; time & delay; global claims & disputes; dispute boards; international arbitration; EU procurement regime; tendering liabilities; civil code; ADR. See more topics on the agenda.
The Founder and Director of Construction Management Guide, Samer Skaik, was highly commended for his submission ‘Taking Statutory Adjudication to the Next Level: Legislative Review Mechanisms of Erroneous Determinations’  in the 2016 Australian Society of Construction Law Brooking Prize. The paper effectively summarizes the core merits of his PhD research in that area.
The criteria used for awarding commendations include originality of thoughts and contribution to the construction law or its application in the industry as well as the quality of analysis, the freshness of ideas and the value of the work.
A more detailed version of that paper will also appear in the upcoming edition of International Construction Law Review Journal. …
In the eyes of many people in our industry, the Middle East construction industry is old fashioned and not very open to new ideas. This view implies that new ideas are good ideas – which isn’t always the case.
Certainly, in the case of construction procurement models, the Gulf remains quite attached to single-stage competitive lowest price tender selection. Everyone knows where they stand and, as between employers and contractors, they stand quite far apart from each other! Relationships tend to be arm’s-length and driven by the formalities of the tender process. And the terms of the contracts formed in this way tend also to be tougher on contractors than we see in other parts of the world. …
The world of construction procurement keeps changing. This process is driven by many factors: sometimes it is technological advances or efforts within our industry to do things better; and sometimes it is driven by external factors such as the worldwide impact of project finance. …
