A practice built around statutory adjudication
We opened our doors in 2014 — the year the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012 came into force — with a single conviction: that construction disputes deserve lawyers who understand construction.
Why a boutique, and why only construction
Construction disputes are their own world. They turn on programmes and progress records, on standard forms with their own machinery, on a statutory regime — CIPAA — that rewrites the ordinary rules of payment. A firm that dabbles in them alongside everything else is always a step behind. We chose the opposite path: a focused practice that does construction disputes and nothing else, so that the depth is real.
Engineering literacy
Our founding partner trained as a civil engineer before he read law, and that outlook runs through the firm. We read the drawings, interrogate the delay analysis, and understand what a variation or a defect actually involves on site. When a case reaches a tribunal, that literacy means the entitlement and the numbers are presented clearly, not lost in translation between the site and the law.
On both sides of the table
We act for unpaid contractors and subcontractors bringing claims, and for employers and main contractors responding to them. Being on both sides, week in and week out, is an advantage: we know how the other side thinks, where the pressure points are, and how a dispute is most efficiently resolved — whether that is a hard-fought adjudication or an early, sensible settlement.
How we work
We are deliberately lean. Partners run their own matters and answer their own phones; the person who scopes your dispute is the person who conducts it. We are candid about prospects and about cost, we keep to the deadlines the statute imposes because we have to, and we would always rather tell you plainly that a claim is not worth pursuing than run up fees on one that is not.
Depth, not breadth
One field, done properly — the whole firm points at construction disputes.
Candour about prospects
We tell you plainly whether a claim is worth pursuing, and what it will take.
Discipline on deadlines
The statute counts in working days. So do we, on every matter we touch.
Partner-led
The partner who scopes your matter is the one who runs it.
A payment claim just landed? The clock has already started.
Construction disputes run on deadlines — statutory and contractual. Tell us where you are and we will tell you, plainly, what your position is and what the next working days require. The first conversation is complimentary.