Construction of combined cycle power station and desalination plant

Facts

Client: Engineering, procurement and construction contractor

Country: Korean contractor – project in Qatar

Industry: Construction – combined cycle power station (1025MW) and multi-stage flash desalination plant (27,500 m3/day)

Services provided:

  • Dispute resolution advice
  • Adjudication

Issues

Issues arose as to liability for delay and disruption and entitlement to additional costs during the construction of an independent water and power project in Qatar. Fenwick Elliott assisted in the preparation of delay, disruption claims and claims for additional cost and advised on adjudication proceedings and settlement negotiations with the project’s owners.

Fenwick Elliott separately advised on successful contractual adjudication proceedings against the project’s owners concerning liability for alleged defects.

Fenwick Elliott also advised on the resolution of disputes between consortium members including overseeing the preparation of detailed critical path delay analysis and the conduct of a structured settlement negotiation leading to a successful outcome for our client.

Solutions

Given our extensive experience of preparing and progressing delay and disruption claims we were able to work with our client to identify the causes of delay, the activities impacted and the extent of delay and put forward the strongest possible case. Fenwick Elliott also assisted in the drafting of key project correspondence and provided strategic advice on the escalation and resolution of disputes.

We also successfully defended adjudication proceedings in respect of an alleged defect to the plant deploying a mixture of technical evidence and legal argument.

Benefits

By cooperating closely with our client’s technical and commercial teams and utilising our extensive experience of power projects in the Middle East, we were able to put forward robust claims positions on our client’s behalf which enabled an acceptable settlement position to be negotiated without the need to resort to arbitration proceedings.

We also assisted our client to avoid a substantial potential liability by successfully defending contractual adjudication proceedings initiated by the project’s owners.