Dispute Boards & Dispute Prevention

Design, implementation and administration of dispute board programs, and service as dispute board chair, member and amiable compositeur on major infrastructure works. Dispute boards keep projects moving by avoiding and resolving disagreements in real time — an approach Jerry has consistently applied throughout The Americas.

A permanent dispute board is a panel of one or three experienced neutrals appointed at the outset of a project and kept in place for its duration. Because the board already knows the job and the people, it can take up disagreements as they arise — often in weeks rather than years — and keep a disagreement from hardening into a claim that stops the work and harms the working relationships that are essential to project success.

Jerry has served as dispute board chair, member and amiable compositeur on major infrastructure works across Central and South America, and was engaged to design, implement and administer a dispute board program spanning dozens of contracts for works required for Rio 2016. That combination — sitting on boards and building the programs that run them — is uncommon, and it shapes how he counsels owners and contractors who want disagreements handled before they escalate.

For clients weighing whether to use a dispute board, Jerry advises on the threshold questions: how the board is constituted, how its decisions bind the parties, how it will promote project success, and how to write the mechanism into the contract so it actually works under pressure. The goal is a process the parties trust enough to use — and that keeps the project moving when they do.