Major new survey of adjudication by the Adjudication Society and Kings College

Lawrence Davies of Pinsent Masons said the Adjudication Society has engaged academics at King’s College London to undertake the research. The project was initiated by a committee within the Adjudication Society that Davies is a member of and he assisted with the questionnaire.

Davies said: “For the past 20 years, the Adjudication Society has commissioned and published an annual report, originally prepared by Glasgow Caledonian University and more recently by Construction Dispute Resolution, identifying trends and analysing the development of construction adjudication based on returned questionnaires from adjudicator nominating bodies (ANBs) and adjudicators.”

“The research is the only work of its kind, having been carried out continuously and consistently since 1998 when statutory adjudication was introduced to the UK construction industry under the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. It is therefore an invaluable resource showing trends in relation to matters such as the number of referrals, the number of adjudicators on the various panels and their disciplines, ANB nomination fees and their CPD requirements and numbers of complaints against adjudicators,” he said.

“In recent years the annual reports have become less illuminating, partly because there has been little change each year in the trends reported previously. However, their major limitation was that the underlying research relied increasingly and almost exclusively on data obtained from the ANBs. The number of individual respondents, whether practising adjudicators, party representatives or members of the industry contributing had reduced significantly. There was therefore a very limited range of topics that could be interrogated by the researchers,” Davies said.

The last report produced in the old format was published in November 2020 covering the year ending 30 April 2020. 

The Adjudication Society has now completely revamped the approach to the research. It has engaged with the Centre of Construction Law and Dispute Resolution at King’s College London to develop a more comprehensive survey questionnaire and has taken steps to ensure that a much broader cross-section of the industry is invited to participate. The data collected will then be reviewed and reported on by researchers at King’s College. 

Davies said: “Invitations to participate in the survey have just been released. Anyone involved in adjudication – whether as adjudicator, party or adviser – is encouraged to take a few moments of their time and to give their thoughts on adjudication. The survey closing date is 13 May 2022. The results later this year should be extremely interesting, and it is hoped the survey will be repeated in future years.”