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Cost and Time Blowouts (and Major Disputes) on Large Construction Projects (03 July 2019)
On 3 July 2019, I had the pleasure of chairing a talk given by the charismatic Mr Simon Bellas and the highly experienced, "legendary" Mr John Cooper, both of whom had been working on some of the very largest infrastructure projects and disputes arising from those projects.
After my initial clarifications that we were not talking about a large feast (or for that matter, hair treatments), the speakers drew on their experiences and spoke to the packed auditorium on the prevalence of cost and time blowouts across the world, and some of the causes such as poor project and scope definition, lack of proper up-front identification of risks, lack of preventative drafting, and inaccuracies in estimates of cost, labour and materials. The usual gripes about parties not reading the contract and following the contract also came up.
The chemistry and tick-tacking between the speakers made the discussions engaging and easy to follow.
It seemed a good idea to segue early into the question and answer segment and on hindsight it was a good call that we did so. The participants readily contributed their thoughts and questions, and there were a number of lively dialogues between participants and the speakers on various topics (with myself interjecting with some observations), including whether there was sufficient specialist expertise in the field and on the use of dispute boards.
There was a brief final note raised touching on how blowouts might be caused by human nature and personality issues potentially affecting the parties' ability to enter into sensible variations (an issue which could possibly take up all of a lecture in itself). Regretfully we then has to bring the proceedings to a close, on what to me seemed to easily be a "top 3" talk this year.
SCL(S) was very pleased to be able to hold a talk that the vast majority of participants had kindly indicated was helpful and clear. On a personal note, it was fun.
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