EDITORIAL

Adjudication
Peter Fenn

Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by Universiti Teknologi Mara on 12/20/14. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

Senior Lecturer, University of Manchester, P.O. Box 88, Manchester

M60, 1QD, U.K. E-mail: peter.fenn@manchester.ac.uk

Michael OShea
Partner, Wragge and Co., Birmingham B3 2AS, U.K. E-mail:
Michael_OShea@Wragge.com

This is the second part of a Special Issue; the response to our call
for papers was so great that we had to divide the papers into two
groups to match the journals budgeted page numbers. When we
proposed the Special Issue, we did it against a backdrop of the
Housing Grants Construction and Regeneration Act 1996
HGCRA of England and Wales. That act introduced adjudication as a first-tier method of dispute resolution in all relevant
construction contracts. This major step represented an extraordinary legislative intervention. It was also an opportunity for empirical study and data in an area dominated by anecdote and
hearsay. Enforcement, procedural, and jurisdictional issues relating to adjudications or decisions made by adjudicators have produced a large body of case law. In addition, the statutory changes
created the role of adjudicator and offered a new career path for
many construction professionals.
We knew that adjudication had become a statutorily imposed
method of dispute resolution in the U.K.and we suspectedin
different forms in New Zealand, Singapore, several states of Australia, and the United States.
We hoped that papers might explain the position around the
world and add to the debate about construction dispute resolution.
That aim has been achieved; the papers report on more than nine
countries over the two Special Issues. The papers included in this
Special Issue are mixed: some are research papers in the usual
ASCE sense, some are research papers in the legal sense, and we
hope that some will help answer that old question, What is different or special about construction?
Nicholas Gould and Charlene Linneman, solicitors specializing in the field, describe the Adjudication Society and the volume
of case law regarding enforcement of adjudication decisions and
clarifications of procedural issues.

Mair Coombes Davies, another barrister, describes adjudication outside construction: adjudication for consumer disputes.
This paper first explores some of the differences, using as an
illustration of consumer adjudication the Communications and Internet Services Scheme CISAS. Second, it looks forward to how
the advantages of both may combine to produce more effective
dispute resolution with consistently high standards for resolving
differences between parties, ensuring that disputes are always effectively and efficiently investigated while streamlining procedures so that they are easy to use, transparent, and cost-effective.
Timothy Hill and Colin Wall wonder Why No Adjudication
in Hong Kong. When discussing the absence of adjudication in
Hong Kong, it is worth remembering that, amid all the hyperbole
about adjudication, some industries in the U.K. successfully lobbied to stay out of the legislation. Other areas, countries, including Hong Kong, have avoided the rush to adjudication.
Richard Anderson argues that good ideas are often overtaken
by great events. That happened to adjudication. Originally envisaged as a single concept applying across the U.K., it has been
overtaken by more significant constitutional change. This paper
takes a look at that process. Something of a parallel could perhaps
be drawn with the individual states in the United States each
introducing a similar form of legislation. The possibility exists, of
course, of each area adopting a different approach, but the indications are that certain communality is developing in adjudication
and that it is perhaps a measure of the success of the concept of
adjudication that adopting it other dependency areas, such as the
Isle of Man, are voluntarily.
Mohamed Marzouk, Ahmed El-Dokhmasey, and Moheeb ElSaid report on the sources of construction delays and the development of a knowledge-based expert system dedicated to
engineering-related delays. The authors discuss claim entitlement,
responsibility, and compensability of claims. A case study is presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed expert system.
Since the authors first wrote their papers, developments have
continued apace, and some authors asked that their papers be
considered in that light.

JOURNAL OF PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND PRACTICE ASCE / JULY 2008 / 297

J. Prof. Issues Eng. Educ. Pract. 2008.134:297-297.