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March UK: In Paice and another v MJ Harding (t/a MJ Harding Contractors) [2015] EWHC 661 (TCC) , there was a rare refusal by the TCC to enforce an adjudicator’s decision due to the possibility of bias . The claimant, Paice, had already lost two adjudications involving the same adjudicator (the first adjudicator), when they phoned his office to discuss the adjudication. After their final account was rejected, MJH initiated a third adjudication, decided by a different adjudicator which Paice also lost. Paice started a fourth adjudication; the first adjudicator was appointed again, and MJH’s representative queried whether there had been contact with Paice in the intervening period. The adjudicator denied this, and MJH requested telephone records from the first adjudicator and Paice. The request was ignored. MJH sought an injunction to prevent the adjudication proceeding but it was not granted. The adjudication concluded with a decision that MJH should repay to Paice the vast majority of its final account payment. Evidence of telephone contact between Paice and the first adjudicator emerged following the decision, and its enforcement was challenged on the grounds of bias. The judge found that the failure by the adjudicator to disclose the conversations, together with’ ill-judged’ criticisms of MJH’s case and a statement made expressly in support of Paice’s application for summary judgment, gave rise to a real possibility of bias and accordingly the application was refused. Coulson J, however, expressed sympathy for Paice, who he deemed had been ill-served by the adjudication process and the adjudicator’s ‘misjudgements’. Australia: In Lamio Masonry Services Pty Ltd v TP Projects Pty Ltd [2015] NSWSC 127 the NSW Supreme Court provided further guidance in the often-grey area of the level of information required for a valid payment claim made under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW). In this case the respondent sought to have an adjudication determination quashed on the basis that it had been denied natural justice because the contractor had only provided evidence of its labour hours through the provision of site diaries in its adjudication application and not in its payment claim. The respondent argued that because the site diaries were only provided in its adjudication application, the respondent was not able to raise, in its payment schedule, the argument that the labour hours were not the applicable rates for the relevant personnel. The court dismissed the argument and said that the claims met the requirements of a payment claim. They identified the job. They gave a brief description of the work done, how many men did the work, how long it took to do the work and the amount charged. UK: The government published a Strategic Plan for Level 3 Building Information Modelling (BIM) , otherwise known as “Digital Built Britain”. The plan follows up on the 2011 Government Construction Strategy, which mandated the use of Level 2 BIM on all public sector projects by 2016, thus significantly contributing to savings of GBP 804 million in construction costs in 2013/14.
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