The South India times: The Municipal Administration & Urban Development (MA&UD) Department, Government of Telangana, today organized a session on arbitration issues conducted by Shri Ratan Singh, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India. Shri Ratan Singh is one of the finest and leading arbitrators in the country dealing with both domestic and international arbitrations, especially in the field of construction, engineering, infrastructure and mining. His expertise also extends to other complex high-value commercial and civil litigations.
As the MA&UD Department is dealing with several arbitration cases, today’s capacity-building session was organized to have complete clarity on construction law, understanding of work contracts, delays and extensions thereto, common disputes– their reasons and nature, and duties and obligations of Independent Consultants, Contract Administrators, and Engineer-in-charge. A major focus of the discussion was also on proper record-keeping for averting disputes.
Shri Ratan Singh spoke on the method and manner of dealing with construction arbitral disputes in India and around the globe. He spoke on the requirement of awareness of the law, due diligence, and appointment of professionals for proper delay analysis for determining the reasons attributable to the delay.
The discussion in the session also revolved around the approach of arbitrators in construction arbitrations, and factors such as handing over of land versus mobilization of resources by concession- aires which are common issues in such arbitrations. Shri Singh stressed the requirement of preparing and updating the baseline program as and when the delay occurs, and the need for contemporaneous record-keeping and delay analysis, to mitigate
probable disputes.
He further spoke on this requirement of preparation and updating of the baseline program to be preferably included as a clause in the contract between the employer and the concessionaire as well as a specific format for providing the delay analysis. Senior Advocate Shri Singh also spoke about the six methods of delay analysis as per standard international protocols.
Deliberations were made on the progress reports furnished by the concessionaire and the deployment of requisite resources by the employer to determine the quantum claimed by the concessionaire on a day-to-day basis.
The Senior Advocate recommended that all data pertaining to all projects be kept electronically managed so as to ensure that the data was not impacted due to changes in officials supervising the projects and the need for a compilation of data chronologically issue-wise and in the proper format.
