If there’s one dispute resolution route every UK quantity surveyor needs to understand cold, it’s adjudication. It’s fast, it’s statutory, and unlike arbitration or litigation, either party can drag the other into it whether they like it or not. Since 1998 it’s been the default first stop for construction disputes in the UK – and increasingly, a mechanism other jurisdictions are borrowing from. If you’ve never run or responded to an adjudication, the timetable alone can feel brutal the first time you’re in one.
This guide covers where the right to adjudicate comes from, exactly how the process runs from notice to decision, why decisions are enforced almost immediately regardless of merit, and what it means for you day-to-day as a QS preparing or defending a referral.
Where the right to adjudicate comes from
Statutory adjudication was introduced by the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 (the “Construction Act”), and it isn’t optional. Section 108 gives either party to a “construction contract” the right to refer a dispute to adjudication at any time, and requires the contract to allow an adjudicator to be appointed within 7 days, reach a decision within 28 days of referral (extendable by 14 days with the referring party’s consent, or longer if both parties agree), and act impartially. If a contract doesn’t contain compliant provisions – or simply omits them – the Scheme for Construction Contracts steps in automatically and fills the gap with its own set of default rules.
Most standard forms build this in as standard rather than leaving it to the Scheme. JCT contracts incorporate the statutory adjudication provisions directly; NEC4 handles it through the W2 dispute resolution option for UK contracts subject to the Construction Act. FIDIC is the exception – being drafted for international use, its forms aren’t automatically caught by the Act and instead route disputes through a Dispute Avoidance/Adjudication Board followed by arbitration. We cover that split in more detail in our comparison of NEC, JCT and FIDIC.
The timetable, step by step
The process runs on a genuinely tight clock, and knowing the sequence before you’re in it is half the battle:
- Notice of Adjudication. The referring party serves a written notice setting out the nature and a brief description of the dispute, the parties involved, where and when it arose, and the redress sought. This is what starts the clock.
- Appointment (within 7 days). The parties either agree an adjudicator between themselves or, more commonly, apply to a nominating body – RICS, the RICS Dispute Resolution Service, the CIArb or the TeCSA among others – to appoint one.
- Referral Notice. The referring party serves its full case – submissions, evidence, valuations, expert or witness material – normally within 7 days of the original Notice. This is effectively your whole claim in one document; there’s rarely a chance to add to it later.
- Response. The responding party typically has somewhere in the region of 7–14 days to reply, depending on what the adjudicator directs.
- Decision (28 days from referral). The adjudicator must decide within 28 days of the Referral Notice, extendable by 14 days with the referring party’s consent alone, or further if both parties agree. In practice, that means a dispute that might take a year or more to reach trial gets a binding answer in under six weeks.
“Pay now, argue later”
The single most important thing to understand about an adjudicator’s decision is that it’s binding and must be complied with immediately, even if one party thinks it’s wrong. That’s the whole point of the mechanism – it exists to keep cash flowing on site rather than tied up in a multi-year dispute. The decision only stops being final if it’s later overturned through litigation, arbitration, or by agreement between the parties; and if it does go to court or arbitration afterwards, the dispute is heard completely afresh rather than as an appeal of the adjudicator’s reasoning.
Enforcement is where this gets teeth. If the losing party simply refuses to pay, the winning party can apply to the Technology and Construction Court, which will generally grant summary judgment to enforce the decision without re-examining the merits. Courts will only refuse enforcement on narrow grounds – typically that the adjudicator had no jurisdiction to decide the dispute referred, or that there’s been a serious breach of natural justice (for example, the adjudicator deciding the case on a basis neither party argued, without giving them a chance to respond). Simply disagreeing with the outcome isn’t one of the grounds.
What actually ends up in adjudication
In our experience, three types of dispute dominate adjudication referrals. Payment disputes are the biggest single category – a party disputing a valuation, a Pay Less Notice, or a failure to serve one at all, where the sums involved and the statutory payment mechanism make a quick, binding answer genuinely useful. Extension of time and loss and expense claims are the second – often bound up with delay analysis disputes, including the concurrent delay questions we cover in our guide to delay analysis methods, where the parties simply can’t agree on the cause or the quantum of the extension. Final account and variation valuation disputes make up most of the rest.
Adjudication sits alongside arbitration and mediation as one of the main construction dispute resolution routes, but it’s a fundamentally different animal – it’s imposed by statute rather than chosen by agreement, and it’s designed to be quick and interim rather than final and exhaustive. If you’re weighing up which route actually suits a given dispute, our piece on arbitration and mediation in construction is a useful companion to this one.
Costs
The adjudicator’s own fees are usually the joint and several liability of both parties, meaning the adjudicator can pursue either party for the full amount regardless of who actually loses – it’s then typically dealt with as part of the decision. Each party’s own legal and consultant costs are a separate matter: since the 2011 amendments to the Construction Act, a contract can’t validly allocate those costs in advance (the so-called “Tolent clause” problem), so unless the parties agree otherwise after a dispute has actually arisen, each side bears its own costs win or lose. That’s worth factoring in before you refer a low-value dispute – the adjudicator’s fees and your own advisor costs can quickly outweigh what’s actually in dispute.
Practical tips if you’re heading into one
Given how short the timetable is, the work that actually wins adjudications happens before the Notice is ever served. Keep contemporaneous records in order as you go – valuations, correspondence, instructions, programme updates – because you won’t have time to reconstruct a paper trail once the clock starts. Read the Notice of Adjudication (if you’re responding) or draft your own (if you’re referring) carefully around jurisdiction: adjudicators can only decide the single dispute actually referred to them, and a badly-drafted Notice that tries to bundle multiple disputes together is a common ground for a later jurisdictional challenge. And get your quantum right first time – the Referral Notice is effectively your one shot to put your full case and figures forward, so it needs to land complete rather than as a work in progress.
Adjudication won’t always give you the final word on a dispute, but it will almost always give you a fast one – and on live projects where cash flow matters more than a perfect legal outcome, that’s usually exactly what’s needed. Understanding the mechanics before you’re staring down a 28-day clock is what turns adjudication from a source of panic into just another tool in the QS toolkit.