Airport in the Middle East

International arbitration | Value of claim >£100m | Expert cross examined

Background 

A new airport terminal had been plagued by delays and escalating costs.  The resultant arbitration concerned the sum due to the contractor. 

The Ridge expert considered aspects of the dispute related to structural steelwork, in particular: 

• Whether allowances made for wastage were reasonable. 

• Acceleration and sequencing of construction works; did certain structures have to be built before others? 

• Reasonableness of fabrication manhours. 

The expert analysed the complex designs, interrogated the models using Tekla, devised methodologies of objectively comparing the similarities of certain structural elements, compared data from the project with available data on industry norms, and presented his highly technical findings simply. 

There were more than ten thousand steel elements involved in the analysis., but the expert report contained many explanatory diagrams that made the complex design and its issues easy to understand. 

Feedback 

The KC involved in the matter said that he had never heard a better expert giving evidence 

Another barrister stated that the Ridge expert was the best steelwork expert he had ever worked with.