Press Articles

Bolton-based construction adviser, The Vinden Partnership (TVP), has been named Construction Firm of the Year in the Lancashire Business View Red Rose Awards, established to recognise successful and innovative companies from the region.

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Exciting news! We are opening a new office in Central London. Click here to read the full press release.

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If you have ever purchased a new house it is highly likely that it came with a building warranty provided by the NHBC, Zurich or similar organisation. The Council of Mortgage Lenders makes clear that they are unwilling to lend money to fund the purchase of a new domestic home unless the homes come with such a warranty.

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"Pay when paid" clauses are supposed to be a concept of a bygone era. Main Contractors would seek to justify their inclusion in a sub-contract by arguing that it should not be the guarantor of payments that are due to pass from an Employer through to the Main Contractor before onward payment to its Sub-Contractors.

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"Getting to YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In" is a best-selling 1981 non-fiction book written by Roger Fisher and William L. Ury...

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It is very tempting for a party to a construction contract to seek to amend the clauses of a standard form of contract in order to shift the commercial balance of the agreement in its favour. Tolent Construction, who by the way is not alone, did just this in its amendments to the Construction Industry Council Model Adjudication Procedure which Tolent incorporated into its "non-standard" standard sub-contract (if you see what I mean) when it introduced the following amendments to clauses 28 and 29 of the CIC rules to read...

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Although I’m reluctant to admit it, I have been advising Contractors and Sub-Contractors on buying insurance for over twenty five years. It is a frustrating business and, quite frankly, a thankless task. No wonder I feel so old!

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The Scheme for Construction Contracts (England and Wales) Regulations 1998 makes clear that an Adjudicator can only deal with one dispute at any one time. Of course, it is open to the parties to agree differently but it is a rare occurrence when parties actually co-operate with each other, let alone the Adjudicator, in an adjudication.

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We are told by experts that the first green shoots of economic recovery have started to appear.

It is a well-known fact that more companies go bust coming out of a recession than during the depths of a recession. Overtrading and lack of bank funding will inevitably cause companies to fail. Contractors and Specialist Sub-Contractors are no exception.

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The Vinden Partnership (TVP), a leading North West property consultancy, has launched Vindemnity a unique insurance product for the construction industry following the appointment of Steve Padley.

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As I look through my window on a wet October day in 2009, my thoughts turn to those Contractors and Sub-Contractors for whom holidays are well and truly over - and I am not talking about the bucket and spade variety!

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If you want to know the meaning of pressure, try negotiating with a hostage taker whose demands are extremely unreasonable and whose motivations are political, racial or based on religious beliefs when a person's life is on the line - then you will really experience what it is to have a difficult conversation!

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The process of Mediation is one of the most common forms of Alternative Dispute Resolution, or ADR. The 'Alternative' referred to is the alternative to a trial and process leading up to trial.

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Given the current economic circumstances it is hardly surprising that Vinden’s Dispute and Corporate Recovery teams are expanding rapidly. Peter Vinden, Vinden’s Managing Director, says this is down to a number of factors.

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North West Mediator, Peter Vinden, talks about using his hostage negotiation training in mediation.

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The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has set ambitious targets for the provision of three million new homes by 2020. Sixty percent of these homes are targeted to be built on brownfield land and by 2016 all new homes in England and Wales are to be ‘Zero Carbon’.

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Quantity surveyors (QS) are facing an increasing need to multitask to beat the recession and keep building their business, according to experts at the Vinden Partnership.

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I recently issued my 100th Adjudicator’s Decision. Whilst this may have been a personal landmark, there were no cakes, no candles or any other celebrations for that matter. Just a little bit of quiet reflection and an intake of breath before diving into the next case in line.

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My firm, The Vinden Partnership (“TVP”) spends a lot of its time advising Directors, Banks and Insolvency Practitioners on the best way to restructure and/or recover businesses involved in the construction supply chain. We have been doing this since TVP’s inception in 1994. It is true to say that over the last 15 years I can remember the Company Voluntary Arrangements (CVAs) I have been involved in on less than the fingers of one hand! However, for reasons that I am hopefully about to explain, things may be about to change.

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I have heard it said on many occasions that it is never a good thing to “blow one’s own trumpet” but on this occasion, however, I just can’t resist. The reason for lifting my head above the parapets is to announce that those clever boys and girls in our insurance department have just come up with a rather useful new form of insurance policy which could soon be in great demand.

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Anybody reading this article who has been involved in a construction dispute will know that it can be an expensive business. Lawyers do not wear nice suits because they are cheap to hire!

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I attend a lot of settlement meetings with clients. These are invariably conducted on a “without prejudice” basis and the purpose of such a meeting is both simple and given away by its title.

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Let’s face facts. Things are getting pretty tough out there and being a director of any company operating in the construction sector at present is not for the faint hearted. Rising costs and too many companies chasing too few orders leads to one thing only – reduced margins and losses!

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Cowgill Holloway’s corporate finance department has advised on the merger of The Vinden Partnership Ltd and Watson Laurie Group, a group of companies controlled by Andrew Crompton.

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If you have ever found yourself in an adjudication the chances are that either you or your opposing party will have asked the Adjudicator to decide that interest is paid on overdue payments.

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My last article dealt with the subject of an Adjudicator’s power to award interest under the Scheme for Construction Contracts (England and Wales) Regulations 1998 (“the Scheme”). The article concluded by saying that where a contract has no provisions relating to the payment of interest, an Adjudicator has no “freestanding power” to award interest.

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As I write this month’s article I am feeling pretty annoyed by one of our clients. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say that we have conducted several adjudications for this particular client over the last year with considerable success.

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This article is normally devoted to matters of a legal nature but this month I feel compelled to depart from the norm in the hope that somebody from our current government may stumble across it and have a word in the ear of our Darling Chancellor.

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1 May 2008 was the 10 year or tin, if you prefer, anniversary for the starting date for the Housing Grants Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. What a mouthful. I still can’t get my head around the title and prefer to call it the Construction Act along with the thousands of us who work in this wonderful industry.

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As the subprime crisis in America sweeps across the Atlantic causing a significant credit squeeze in the UK, one of the first sectors in the firing line is construction.
Construction across the UK appears to have fallen victim to the economic uncertainty that exists and latest figures show the sector shrinking for the first time in more than six years.

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Regular readers of this column will know that I have something of a passion for mediation. If I ruled the world every day would be Christmas (only joking – you should see Mr Vinden’s credit card bills this year) and I would compel every party to every civil dispute to try mediation as a pre-cursor to litigation in the Courts. Why? -because I am convinced that mediation serves the parties better than the obscenely expensive alternatives.

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When delay occurs on a construction project the cause of delay is either an event for which the Contractor is responsible, one for which the Employer is responsible, or due to factors which are beyond either party’s control. This third class of causation of delay is said to be neutral in terms of causation simply because it is a delay that neither the Employer nor the Contractor is responsible for having caused.

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I am pretty sure that all the readers of this publication will know something about withholding notices. The requirement for a paying party to issue a written withholding notice where part or all of a payment is to be held back from a Contractor or Sub-Contractor is set down in Section 111 of The Housing Grants Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 (“The Act”).

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Unless you have just spent the best part of 10 years living in outer Mongolia you will be aware that The Housing Grants Construction and Regeneration Act (1996) (“The Act”) changed the commercial life of Contractors and Sub-Contractors working in the UK forever when it was introduced here on 1 May 1998.

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Sometimes it seems that Clients want it all. The cheapest price, the shortest programme, the Contractor assuming as much risk as possible……sound familiar? And then to top it all, the subject of parent company guarantees or other third party guarantees is raised.

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It never ceases to amaze me how small our world is becoming. Who would have thought events in the American sub-prime mortgage market would have such an effect on our UK banking sector? When was the last time you heard of a run on a UK bank? Am I dreaming? And, what does this actually mean for the UK construction sector?

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The Party Wall etc Act 1996, which was introduced throughout England and Wales in July 1997, has recently turned 10 years old. Yet, there are many, including professional property developers, that know very little about the Act.

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If you have been involved in a dispute in the last few years that has ended up in the Courts, the chances are that you will have heard all about mediation. Last month’s article “Stop Gambling and Try Mediation” was written to make readers aware of the Court’s increasing interest in requiring parties to try mediation as an alternative to other more expensive methods of dispute resolution.

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Have you ever received a document marked “Privileged”, “Without Prejudice” or even “Without Prejudice Save as to Costs”? I bet you have, but do you know what these words actually mean? Let me try and explain.

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It never cease to amaze me how people underestimate the complexity of construction projects. With so many parties involved mostly motivated by money, conflicting egos, unrealistic programmes, variations, weather, is it really any wonder that so many construction projects have an inbuilt capacity to go very wrong?

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It is not unusual for Parties to represent themselves in adjudication. There is nothing wrong with this. Indeed, it is probably the case that the drafters of the Housing Grants Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, or the Construction Act as it is commonly known, fully expected parties to represent themselves in a process which was developed specifically to serve the needs of contracting parties operating in the construction industry.

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