Insights & Analysis

Current thinking.

Our perspective on the evolving landscape of construction disputes. Analysis of recent case law, statutory changes, and the commercial realities of modern adjudication.

IN.
Latest briefingThe Release

The End of Retentions: A Three Year Clock That Has Not Started

The Commercial Payments Bill will ban retentions, but not on the day it is passed and not all at once. It creates a transition period, a void rule and a last retention day, and a fixed sum of 50 per cent for withholding a retention without a valid notice.

October 2026|9 minRead briefing
Earlier briefings
The Trap
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Why Traditional Delay Analysis Fails in 28-Day Adjudications

The standard approach to forensic programme analysis was designed for litigation timescales. Adjudication demands a fundamentally different discipline.

February 2026|6 min
The Shift
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The Building Safety Act: The New Frontier of Remediation Claims

Multi-party liability, complex causation, and extended limitation periods are creating a distinct class of construction dispute.

March 2026|8 min
The Tech
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Beyond the Hype: What AI Actually Looks Like in a Dispute

The gap between what technology companies promise and what practitioners need is substantial. Here is what actually works.

April 2026|5 min
The Measure
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Proving Disruption: The Hardest Claim in the Final Account

Disruption is pleaded in almost every major final account and proved in almost none. The difference between assertion and evidence decides where these claims land.

May 2026|7 min
The Ledger
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Smash-and-Grab, True Value, and the Price of a Missed Notice

Eight years after Grove, the payment battleground has a settled shape: the notified sum rules, and the true-value counterpunch waits behind it.

June 2026|6 min
The Duty
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Independence on Trial: What the TCC Now Expects of Experts

The courts have moved from criticising partisan experts to excluding their evidence altogether. Independence is now an admissibility threshold, not professional etiquette.

July 2026|7 min
The Overlap
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Concurrent Delay: Who Keeps the Time, Who Pays for It

Concurrent delay preserves the contractor's time and forfeits its money. In England the law is settled; the arguments fail on the records, not the principles.

July 2026|7 min
The Gateway
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Stuck at the Gateway: Who Owns Building Safety Regulator Delay?

How regulatory review affects programme assumptions, notices and the allocation of delay risk on higher-risk building projects.

August 2026|8 min
The Lock
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The Levy and the Locked Door

A review of levy exposure, payment timing and the allocation of cost in residential construction contracts.

August 2026|7 min
The Reach
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Adjudicate, Then Attach: One Decision, the Whole Group

The relationship between adjudication, building liability orders and the project records relevant to a corporate group’s position.

September 2026|9 min
The Sequence
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Pay Now, Value Later: The Notified Sum Is a Timing Rule

A subcontractor was awarded its notified sum, was paid it, and two months after the court enforced the order was directed to repay 96 per cent of it. The VMA cases show what a notified sum actually buys; the 2026 notice cases show which side of it a party will be on.

September 2026|9 min