Masterclass in Law and Techniques 2006/7
It was always likely that Robert Fenwick Elliott’s Masterclass on RDA would attract some interest in Adelaide, but demand for it proved significantly greater than expected.
The Masterclass takes the form of an intensive half day or three-quarter day interactive workshop for contractors, project managers, superintendents, engineers, architects, arbitrators and advisers who deal with delay claims in construction and engineering projects.
We originally planned to run the class just once, on 16th November 2006, but ran it again on 6th December. In addition, a number of organisations have asked for their own in-house sessions, and that series been run. A further class was run in March 2007 in Sydney.
Course Content
Included:
- a brief introduction to CPM, and the technical differences between planning and delay analysis
- the use of software such as Primavera and Microsoft Project for delay analysis purposes; Kane v Kopov
- the legal approach to causation, the “but for” test, March v Stramare, the treatment of concurrent causation following Henry Boot v Malmaison
- dealing with shifts in the critical path
- mitigation and constructive acceleration
- methods of analysis including as-planned impact analysis, time impact analysis, collapsed analysis, etc.
- the treatment of resourcing and rescheduling; the measured mile
- the use of watershed analysis; choosing the watershed points and presentation techniques
- anomaly checking and the “palpable nonsense” test
- global claims, damages claims and Decor v Cox
Presenter
The course was presented by Robert Fenwick Elliott
Robert is admitted as a lawyer in South Australia, New South Wales and England. Described by The Legal 500 and Chambers as “one of the industry’s leading practitioners” and “a dominant force”, he was the founding partner of Fenwick Elliott LLP, one of the largest construction law practices in the world and is now with Fenwick Elliott Grace in Adelaide. He has led the delay analysis teams on many large disputes arising out of projects around the world.
The feedback
Those attending the masterclass have been invited to complete an evaluation sheet. The overall evaluation has been as follows:
| Excellent | 37 |
| Good | 23 |
| Moderate | 1 |
| Disappointing | 0 |
| Poor | 0 |
Comments include:
| “A well presented and relevant session. Most enjoyable. Robert knows his stuff and in addition is a good presenter. Best training session for a long time.” | Luke Janmaat Project Manager Baulderstone Hornibrook |
| “Excellent content & presentation. A class above the rest. It challenged as well as informed. One of the best I’ve attended and look forward to the next.” | Mike Johnston Built Environs |
| “Informative on an important & often misunderstood subject, and very interesting in the presentation.” | David Egarr Department for Transport, Energy and Infrastructure, Government of South Australia |
| “Excellent. Appreciate format, explanation and relevance.” | Emmanuel KelakiosAlpine Constructions |
| “Useful, a lot to take in in only 3 hours.” | Craig Wilson Hindmarsh Group |
| “Very useful for our scope of works. Thank you for your presentation.” | Mike Jolly Coombs & Barei Constructions |
| “Very good; one of the best. I look forward to the Masterclass 2″ | Jeremy Whitehead Built Environs |
| “Good presentation” | Chris Bate Hansen Yuncken |
| “Good speaker – case studies made it easier to understand the points” | David Focareta Hansen Yuncken |
| “Excellent presentation – clearly experienced in this area” | Leonard Sampson, Flinders Power |
| “Very comprehensive. Introduced some terms and concepts I had never previously heard” | George Ochota, Hindmarsh Group |
| “Good discussion – all totally relevant” | Marcus Towell, Baulderstone Hornibrook |
| “Very informative and thought provoking. Will be giving a lot of thought to establishing delay analysis protocol for the office” | Ashley Halliday, Architect, Hassell |
| “Very good, very enjoyable. Some good examples which is very helpful to put concepts into perspective” | Katherine Lang, Department for Environment and Heritage, Government of South Australia |
