Practitioners' perception of adjudication in UK construction

he Construction Act of 1996 provided for adjudication to be available to the parties on the majority of construction contracts and it is now a well established construction dispute resolution process. Its perceived success is well documented. However, lately there have been criticisms targeting issues such as increased costs, ambush by the claiming party and unrealistic timescales. A questionnaire survey was conducted amongst Construction Professionals, Lawyers, Arbitrators/Adjudicators and Clients in order to establish the role of adjudication in the U.K. construction industry and to examine whether the above criticisms are widely held views. The results show that one of the advantages of the UK Adjudication system is that the parties have a right to seek adjudication "at any time" and respondents strongly disagreed that parties should be allowed to contract out. Data was inconclusive with regard to the criticisms that in practice the majority of adjudications exceed the 28 + 14 days timescale, or that Claimants frequently use "ambush" tactics when serving claim documents in order to disadvantage respondents. The implications of this are discussed.