Regional Workshop: Navigating Construction Disputes: Practical Strategies from Claim to Resolution

This half-day hybrid arbitration workshop unfolds across three sequential sessions that trace a construction claim from contract signature through final award. Session 1, Preventing and Positioning Claims Before a Dispute Arises, focuses on front-end protection — drafting and negotiating the provisions that most often decide a claim’s fate (notice requirements, change order procedures, no-damage-for-delay clauses, flow-downs, and dispute resolution mechanisms), maintaining the contemporaneous records that form the evidentiary backbone of any claim (daily logs, correspondence, schedule updates, cost tracking, and photographs), and recognizing emerging issues such as differing site conditions, design deficiencies, and schedule disruptions early enough to preserve rights in real time without damaging the working relationship. Session 2, Managing Active Construction Disputes, turns to claim development: building the entitlement case by identifying breached obligations and analyzing contractual risk allocation; proving causation through CPM delay analysis, concurrent delay assessment, and techniques for isolating overlapping disruptions; and quantifying damages across direct costs, extended general conditions, lost productivity (measured mile, total cost, and modified total cost), Eichleay home office overhead, lost profits, and consequential damages, along with the defenses — betterment, failure to mitigate, and contractual liability limits — that must be anticipated. Session 3, Resolving Construction Disputes—Mediation, Arbitration, and Litigation, closes with forum strategy and presentation, weighing cost, speed, confidentiality, provisional relief, and appellate rights when choosing among negotiation, mediation, dispute review boards, arbitration, and litigation; maximizing early resolution through well-prepared mediation statements, well-timed mediation, and standing dispute review boards; and presenting a construction case for decision — selecting and challenging arbitrators, managing voluminous document and electronic discovery, deploying scheduling, cost, and technical experts, translating complex narratives for decision-makers without industry background, and navigating post-award enforceability and the limited grounds for vacatur.