HAVING recently launched a new Dispute Resolution Support Service, Hardies Property & Construction Consultants have hit the road to publicise it!.
Scotland’s largest multi-discipline surveying firm with fourteen offices across the country, Hardies have designed the new service to provide clients in both the public and private sectors with an opportunity to resolve problems without adopting formal Dispute Resolution procedures.
With wide experience of negotiation across both sides of the contractual divide, the new support service can assist in Adjudication and other Dispute Resolution procedures, providing advice on payment and valuation disputes; measurement; interim and final accounts; extension of time, loss and expense; building defects and remedial works; programming, planning and delay analysis; rent review, lease negotiations and related disputes.
Starting earlier this month in Glasgow, Hardies held a special event to launch the service and to introduce the specialist consultant heading it up, Len Bunton FRICS FCIArb, who will help to develop the service across the UK. The RICS offices in Princes Street provided the venue for the Edinburgh showcase and at The Apex Hotel in Dundee, where some 30 industry guests had the opportunity to find out more.
Jim McArthur, Hardies Business Development Partner, who has been closely involved with Len Bunton in bringing the new service to the marketplace, explained, “These showcase events have been very successful. We believe this new service fills a gap in the market and that there is no substitute for face to face contact in introducing it to the marketplace. Holding these special seminars has enabled Len and myself to engage directly with potential customers.
“Len brings to the table a wealth of experience in this sector. This new service has the main objective of saving clients time and money. It’s complementary to the other wide range of services we currently offer to the construction and property sectors but it’s now applied in a more focused and co-ordinated manner, enhanced by appropriate training. As a firm we are in many ways, a combination of very specialist departments in one firm, able to offer clients a one hundred year heritage, wide geographic coverage, all backed up by well informed, highly trained specialist staff.”
As well as having extensive experience in the construction industry, as a cost consultant and project manager, Len Bunton has been involved in Dispute Resolution for over 30 years and is Past Chairman of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. He said, “I am really pleased with the turnout at each of the three events we have recently hosted introducing on this new service. Industry professionals were indeed very interested to see how our philosophy of assisting them to achieve resolution of any dispute without recourse could help them and we have hit the ground running for sure.”
