CONSTRUCTION LAW HUGH WATSON SENIOR ASSOCIATE CORRS CHAMBERS WESTGARTH The building, construction and infrastructure sector is a major industry that underpins a substantial component of the Australian economy, and ‘construction law’ can be viewed as the law and legal practice which relates to this high profile area. Whether it is infrastructure (roads, railways, hospitals, desalination projects, schools, etc), energy and resources or commercial and residential property projects, construction law (and construction lawyers) are at the heart of the successful delivery of these projects.
Diverse Range of Experiences Construction lawyers work across all stages of a project, including: • project structuring advice and delivery strategies (should, for example, a client set-up a project as a more traditional design, construct, operate and maintain (DBOM) contract, or will the public private partnership (PPP) produce a better result?); • drafting of construction contracts, consultancy agreements, operation and maintenance contracts and a variety of ancillary documents; • advising on tender strategies, assessing tender responses and negotiating contracts; • advising banks on construction risks for financed projects; • assisting clients in the day-to-day administration of a project; and • dispute resolution, including litigation, arbitration and alternative dispute resolution processes. Construction law is one of the areas of practice in which it is common for lawyers to be both an expert ‘front64
end’ (contract negotiation and drafting) and ‘back-end’ (dispute resolution and litigation) practitioner, so there is always work to be done no matter which direction the economy is heading. Lawyers in construction law are also exposed to a variety of legal disciplines outside of their core practice (including competition, financing, intellectual property, industrial relations and workplace health and safety) and regularly work collaboratively with experts in such areas. Few areas of law offer as much variety as construction law, and given that most law students, seasonal clerks and even graduates are uncertain about their preferred area of specialisation, the benefit of having a diverse range of legal experiences should not be underestimated.
High Profile Work Construction law gives you the opportunity to develop your legal skills by working on a range of high profile matters, and you will actually be able to read about and see the physical results of your work (sometimes from your office window!). From Corrs’ offices we can see: • the Southern Star Observation Wheel at Docklands, where we have been acting for ING in relation to structural defects; and • the NAB, Medibank and Victoria Police headquarters at the Docklands and the Melbourne Convention Centre, which we prepared and/or negotiated the contracts for. On any given day it is more than likely that a number of Corrs’ other construction matters will be in the papers, such as: • the National Broadband Network (the largest infrastructure project in Australia’s history), where