Claims and disputes
Independent commercial assessment and preparation of construction claims, helping contractors, developers and employers establish contractual entitlement, quantify disputed sums and resolve commercial disagreements.
Main contractors: applications that are hard to cut, variation accounts that stand up, and entitlement tested properly before anybody argues about it.
Subcontractors: payment positions, contra charges and set off, and accounts assessed by somebody whose whole job is to find reasons to pay you less.
Developers and employers: the same questions from the paying side: whether a claim is sound, what it is worth and where the exposure actually sits.
Investors and funders: an independent read on what a disputed account means for the scheme, kept separate from whoever happens to be running it.
Quantity surveying practices: specialist support on a single claim inside an existing appointment, without taking the client relationship away.
Homeowners on larger projects: the same discipline, scaled down, for the moment at which a builder’s account has stopped making any sense at all.
The problem
Almost none of them start as a dispute. They start as a notice nobody served, an instruction nobody wrote down, or a record nobody kept.
A variation is agreed on site and valued eight months later, by which time the only evidence of what was agreed is two people remembering it differently.
A payment application is assessed by somebody whose job is to find reasons to pay less, and the easiest reason is that the claim cannot be followed from the documents.
Time is granted and money is assumed to follow, when the two are decided under different provisions, on different evidence, and settled together far too often.
A final account is assembled at the end from whatever record survived the job, which is why accounts settle at very different numbers on very similar projects.
What we do
Each one is a defined piece of work with a written deliverable and a clear scope. Fees are agreed individually based on the nature, complexity and scope of the matter.
A first read of one dispute: the contract provisions that apply, the key correspondence, and the principal contractual and commercial risks. You get written findings and a recommended next step, which is sometimes that there is no claim worth running.
One payment cycle examined end to end: the application, the payment notice, the pay less notice, the due date and the final date for payment. Payment disputes are won and lost on dates and notices far more often than on measurement of the work itself.
Whether there is an entitlement to additional payment or time at all, before anybody argues about how much. Clauses, notices, procedural requirements, scope of works, instructions and correspondence, and an honest account of where the evidence is thin.
Original scope against what was instructed, quantities assessed, and valuation built on the rules the contract provides. On NEC this runs as a compensation event, with its own notice periods and quotation procedure, not as a JCT variation renamed.
The contractual provisions that apply, the disruption and prolongation actually incurred, site preliminaries and the records that support them, and the link between cause and cost. Where that link cannot be shown, we say so rather than build a claim on it.
Contractual provisions, programme and project records, a chronology of the delay events and the notices that were and were not served, prepared as a submission. Advanced forensic delay analysis is a separate discipline and is not part of this scope.
Retention provisions, the practical completion and defects position, the conditions for release, the payment history and what is actually outstanding. The output is a recommended route to recovery and an honest view of what the contract will support.
Reconciliation of the account, interim valuations and payments, variations, retention and contra charges, with the disputed sums set out in schedules and a recommendation on where to settle. It sits alongside our wider final accounts and disputes work.
Entitlement first, then the number. A claim that skips the first question is just an invoice with a story attached.
The sequence is always the same. Review the contract and the records. Assess whether there is an entitlement and how strong it is. Prepare the submission with the evidence attached to it. Then support the commercial resolution, which is usually a negotiation and occasionally an adjudication.
Where a dispute goes to adjudication we provide the commercial and documentary side: case assessment, evidence bundles, and the quantum support behind a referral or a response. We do not conduct the proceedings, we are not an accredited adjudicator, and we do not provide legal representation. Where procedural or legal expertise is needed, we work alongside a construction disputes solicitor or an appropriately qualified practitioner, and we will say so early rather than late.
Fees are agreed individually based on the nature, complexity and scope of the matter. Each piece of work has a written scope and a defined deliverable, agreed before it begins. External experts, legal fees, adjudicator fees and enforcement costs sit outside any agreed scope unless they are expressly included. No outcome is promised: what is promised is an honest assessment of the position, including when the position is weak.
Questions
No. This is commercial and contractual assessment: what the contract provides, what the records show, and what the disputed sums are worth. It is not legal advice and it is not legal representation. Where a question turns on legal interpretation or on procedure before a tribunal, you need a construction solicitor, and we will tell you that rather than work around it.
No. We are not an accredited adjudicator and we do not conduct adjudications. What we provide is the commercial and documentary support behind a referral or a response: case assessment, evidence bundles and quantum.
JCT Standard Building Contract, JCT Design and Build, JCT Minor Works where the dispute suits it, NEC3 and NEC4, RIBA domestic building contracts, bespoke contracts and subcontract agreements. The procedures differ between them, particularly between a JCT variation and an NEC compensation event, and the difference usually matters more than the quantum.
Not always. The statutory payment framework in England and Wales applies to most construction contracts, but a contract with a residential occupier, meaning someone having work done on the dwelling they occupy or intend to occupy, is outside it. That distinction catches homeowners out regularly, because the notices and deadlines they have read about may not apply to their contract at all. The contract itself then governs.
No. On any single project we act for one party only, and that applies to disputes more strictly than to anything else. The scheme is checked against current and previous appointments before an instruction is accepted, and if there is a conflict you hear about it immediately.
Yes, and that is most of the value. A review that confirms there is no entitlement worth pursuing saves considerably more than it costs. We do not promise recovery of disputed sums and we will not build a submission on evidence that is not there.
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