Poorly drafted or incomplete and unsubstantiated claims is the top cause for disputes this year, despite it being absent from the top three reasons for disputes last year. This is likely to mean that the party receiving the claim, whether an employer, contractor, subcontractor or supplier, will not go through the burden of considering a claim that is not narrated and substantiated up to a professional standard. This seems to be the case regardless of whether the party receiving the claim believes the other party has even a partial entitlement to the claim. This is likely due to the current financial and economic climate globally and in the Middle East in particular, which similar to the previous year, places much more emphasis on the claiming party to take on the role of providing the burden of proof rather than expecting the other party to fill in the gaps in the claim document. This doesn't come as a surprise, especially when a failure to properly administer the contract, which forms the backbone of a construction claim's substantiation, and owner/contractor/subcontractor failing to understand and/or comply with its contractual obligations, hold second and third place as the causes for disputes in 2018.
Surprisingly, last year's causes, which were related to employer's responsibility, such as failure to make interim awards on extensions of time and compensation as well as owner directed changes, are no longer the top three causes this year.
The most common methods of Alternative Dispute Resolution used in the Middle East in 2018 changed slightly from 2017 with mediation replacing dispute adjudication Boards in third place while party-to-party negotiation remained as the leading method followed by arbitration.