Tom Stipanowich has posted a new article, “Managing Construction Conflict: Unfinished Revolution, Continuing Evolution,” at the Pepperdine Law Library’s Legal Studies Research Paper Series. Stipanowich is a trained architect, an experienced construction lawyer, and a very experienced construction arbitrator, and his article speaks authoritatively on the past 20 years of change in construction dispute practices.
He concludes that the promise of innovation that so dominated the field 20 years ago — DRBs, statutory “adjudication” in the UK, collaborative contractual platforms, real-time on-site conflict resolution — has failed to take hold in a way that has fundamentally altered the way disputes are handled. In the past five-year period, mediation is down and arbitration is way down. And the cause? The industry has “lawyered-up,” concludes Stipanowich, and it’s the dispute professionals, not the parties themselves, that drive the dispute resolution processes and derive the main benefit from them.
