Construction & Engineering Legal Services

The construction & engineering industry is a market measured in the trillions of US dollars each decade.

Challenges and opportunities to the industry are being brought about by technological advances, new contractors entering new markets, building safety legislation including widened liabilities, hybrid working, the underlying skills shortage in the labour market and, most recently, possible maximum payment terms and a ban on cash retentions under ‘construction contracts’.

Both suppliers and purchasers of construction services need to understand these challenges and opportunities, and the potential impacts they have on their businesses and projects.  

We understand these challenges and opportunities and can provide you with a personable, highly responsive specialist service, suited to the needs and requirements of your specific business and projects.

If your business has been or will be impacted by these challenges or you wish to discuss the opportunities brought about by these issues, please do get in touch or read more about our team and insights below.

Our construction & engineering legal expertise

We provide the full range of construction services required for projects (procurement, transactional, project advisory services and disputes advice). Our offering covers additional services for businesses operating in the construction industry (including real estate, planning, employment issues, health and safety, corporate transactions, financing, technology, corporate restructuring and insolvency) enabling us to support you across large and small-scale projects, both in the UK and internationally.

Clients include employers, major contractors, specialists and leading engineering consultancies. They also include government entities and regulators, sovereign wealth funds, multi-national corporates, major investors, high-profile families and individuals.

Working seamlessly and internationally, you will work with us as ‘one team’ to deliver projects, regardless of geography, and leveraging specific expertise from our other international offices.  

Procurement services

Whether you are supplying or purchasing construction services, our aim is always the same: to ensure projects come in on time, on budget and to specification. Clearly defined risk allocation risk management mechanisms within contracts together with the right procurement choices, play an important part in ensuring we help you achieve your project objectives.

Your full spectrum of legal issues will require careful consideration and coordination. The advice you will benefit from includes:

• procurement options and best practice
• national and international procurement compliance and challenges
• construction & engineering contract documentation, including amendments to all types of national and international standard form contracts
• consultant appointments
• collateral warranties, novations, and use of third party rights
• financial security documentation (such as bonds, guarantees and letters of credit)
• building safety

Advisory & dispute resolution

Projects never proceed risk free. Risks such as delays, unforeseen additional costs, defects, the solvency of contracting parties and health and safety matters can arise and can result in significant impacts on the success of a project, damage to business relationships and disruption of your ordinary business activities.

Should those risks materialise, you will have immediate access to project advisory services which can mitigate the risk of matters proceeding to a formal dispute.

If matters cannot be resolved through dialogue and agreement, your disputes can be resolved in a way that suits your needs. Whether that is through dispute avoidance measures (such as mediation), litigation, adjudication, arbitration (national and international), expert determination or other forms of alternative dispute resolution.

As part of our overall dispute resolution strategy we can utilise tools such as our Discovery on Demand product that allows the cost-effective and efficient assessment of your case, which are often very document heavy. Various options are available for funding the dispute, and through our litigation funding product, Fessible, we are able to identify and suggest a variety of funding models to ensure that the dispute is funded in the most appropriate way.