British Construction Contract Dispute Ruling System

It is of great significance to promote the project and ensure the interests of all parties if the contractual disputes are settled effectively under the premise of maintaining the friendly business relationship during the performance period of contrast. Adjudication is a unique way to settle construction contrast disputes in U.K, which is quite different from conciliation and arbitration. In the recent 10 years, it has become the most widely applicable and most effective solution to the construction contrast disputes. This dissertation paper applies such research methods as historical analysis, normative analysis, comparative studies, systematical analysis and value assessment to adjudication, in an attempt to reveal its referential meanings and enlightenments to China.This dissertation paper is divided into four parts, consisting of about 30,000 characters.Part one concentrates on the introduction of adjudication, beginning with the definition of adjudication to determine the scope of this study. And then it straightens out the adjudication from the sub-contracts to various types of construction contracts, from the consensual to the statutory in nature, and from the few applicable to the wide application in its historical development, thereby finds the reasons for the rise of adjudication: the conceptual foundation is from confrontation to cooperation; the internal driving force is its special nature; the external cause is the defects of other dispute resolutions. Finally, it divides adjudication into four types based on different standards: statutory adjudication, contractual adjudication, adjudication which adjudicator is appointed by client and adjudication which is appointed by adjudicator nominating bodies, and clarifies the applicable conditions and limitations.Part two concentrates on the constitution of adjudication. It studies the five basic elements: client, dispute, adjudicator, rule, adjudicator's decision in terms of its static text meaning. It introduces client of adjudication in both broad and narrow sense, and then discusses dispute from the connotation and extension meaning, and adjudicator's qualification, selection, replacement, resignation, rights, obligations as well as the substantive rule and procedural rule applicable to adjudication, and lastly it elucidates the ambit, effect and enforcement of adjudication, making it clear that there are two kinds of effects of adjudication: temporary binding and final binding, and that there are two kinds of grounds of challenging the adjudicator's decision: lack of jurisdiction and severe violation of rules of natural justice.Part 3 concentrates on a systematical analysis of adjudication of contract disputes in U.K. This part abandons studying the text of adjudication in isolation. Instead, it investigates adjudication throughout the dispute settlement mechanism and in practice. It compares adjudication with conciliation, expert determination, Disputes Review Boards and arbitration, and states the linkage between them with distinction. Take the ICE and NEC, two widely applicable construction contract formats in UK, as examples to clarify the linkage between adjudication and other dispute settlements. The writer believes that the contract formats in U.K. are suitable for collaborative dispute resolution through the application of setting the time sequence, dialogue between different solutions and the degree of mandatory effects of solutions with adjudication being the key solution. With the degree of client's control of procedure, strength and effectiveness of the application of adjudication being analyzed, it concludes that adjudication is in the center of the spectrum of dispute settlements and intermediate phase of hybrid dispute resolution and that it is the effective dispute settlement. Finally, it expatiates the capacity of settling dispute, satisfaction, social effects and cost of adjudication in practice: it gains wide application and settle the most construction contract disputes; it gains wide acceptance and praise by the construction industry; it, to some extent, meliorates the discrepancy between the contracting parties to maintain a friendly business relationship and gains good social effects; its cost is comparatively low.Part four concentrates on the enlightenments of adjudication in U.K. from the following aspects: firstly, it comments adjudication on its advantages and values and it believes that adjudication is advantageously efficient, professional, economic, flexible and restraint as well as efficiency-oriented with the consideration to fairness and order. Secondly, after investigation into Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and other countries' bringing in adjudication and the most common international FIDIC contract's substituting the Dispute Review Boards for Dispute Adjudication Boards, it concludes that adjudication is of great enlightenment to China as it is good for mending the defeats of some dispute solutions, for meeting the special requirement of some construction contract disputes, for relieving the burden of the court, for fitting for the change of contract model, based on which it brings forward the primary blueprint of China's establishment of adjudication from such three aspects as legal system, institutions and procedures. Lastly, based on the revelation of defeats in linkage between various construction contract dispute settlement mechanism and lack of systematization of dispute settlement mechanism, it advances that the model of resolving dispute in construction contracts should be established under the guidelines of the judicial cooperative technology and the protection of client's right of procedure choice.