It is a pretty gloomy construction industry in the UK, at present, and one chink of light has seen growing support for the Conflict Avoidance Process – CAP.
This is an early intervention process in construction and engineering projects to ensure that issues that are emerging are resolved by the parties involved, without recourse to costly and time consuming disputes resolution processes like Adjudication. There is no doubt that we are now seeing growing interest in CAP, and several projects are now seeing provisions embedded into Building Contracts so that the process will become the norm, and not the exception,
In Scotland, for example, there has been excellent support for Construction Industry Collaborative Voice and the construction organisations like SBF, SELECT, CECA, SNIPEF, BESA, and the Finishes and Interiors sector have all signed the Conflict Avoidance Pledge and have encouraged their membership to do likewise. So far over 452 construction organisations throughout the UK have signed the Pledge and members of CECA are encouraged to do so, by following this link – www.rics.org/capledge.
The whole ethos of this is to allow the parties to work proactively to avoid conflict and to encourage collaborative working and to work together to identify potential disputes and to work to resolve these. In most of the cases that have been carried out to date, this has involved the input of a seasoned industry consultant, drawn from any discipline, who will work with the parties and come up with a series of binding, or non-binding recommendations, and anecdotally the process has been very effective in resolving issues between the parties and in allowing them to carry on and complete the projects in a spirit of trust and mutual cooperation.
In addition to the above the Conflict Avoidance Coalition Steering Group, comprises about 50 or so organisations who are involved in driving the process forward, and in particular are encouraging procuring authorities to have a provision for CAP in contracts. The Steering Group is reaching into all sectors including transportation, rail, nuclear, water and utilities, power, civils, health, education, defence, and commercial projects.
For further information contact CECA Director of Operations Marie-Claude Hemming.