Last year's report highlighted professionals' increasing involvement in dispute avoidance as part of the risk management system. This year's findings confirm further increasing efforts, starting at earlier stages and ongoing during the project in order to improve the contract, project controls and risk management system.
Not surprisingly, due to these increasing efforts, a failure to properly administer the contract dropped from the second slot in 2017 - and the first slot in 2016 and many other years - to third this year, indicating the region is steadily improving in this area.
The leading cause of disputes in Continental Europe this year was differing site conditions, followed by third-party or force majeure events, neither of which topped the list in recent years, which is a surprise and may indicate a drop in technical and constructability review of projects compared to the improving efforts in other dispute avoidance techniques.
The three most common methods of alternative dispute resolution in 2018 changed slightly from previous years with the addition of mediation over arbitration, as predicted by the region in last year's report:
1. Party-to-party negotiation
2. Mediation
3. Expert determination
Party-to-party negotiation remains the leading method to solving disputes. Mediation tops the list at second rank for the first time, as a result of professionals' and institutions' increasing involvement in its promotion. This may be a good sign of stakeholders' willingness to use new techniques to solve disputes faster than party-to-party negotiation.
Surprisingly not listed in this year's top three most common methods of alternative dispute resolution is arbitration, which remains strong with continuous growth in Continental Europe, notably in Paris.