Newsletter
Information for members
February 2004

Previous issue: January 2004
Next issue: March 2004

Unless marked otherwise, the following meetings are free to members and guests.

Location maps are now always available on the website.

All are welcome but for those meetings where the organiser's telephone or email is given, it would be helpful if you could please let them know of your intention to attend .

Programme

Tuesday, 3rd February 6.15pm
“Recent treatment of construction awards by ICC International Court of Arbitration”
Speaker: Robert Knutson
Chair: John Tackaberry QC
Venue: National Liberal Club, Whitehall Place , London SW1

Tuesday, 10 th February 6.00pm
“Valuing Payments Due in Adjudication”
Speaker: Peter Collie
Venue: Newton Board Room, Nottingham Trent University , NG1
Organiser: jocelyntaylor@scl.org.uk

Thursday, 12th February 6.00pm
“The new JCT Major Projects Form of contract: Commercial realism and drafting issues”
Speaker: Neil Jones
Chairman: Ellis Baker
Venue: Pinsents, 3 Colmore Circus, Birmingham B4
Organiser: arulselvaratnam@scl.org.uk

Friday, 27th February 12.30 for 1.00pm
SCL 's annual Lunch at the Brewery, Chiswell Street , London EC2
"Adjudication - the Future"
Speaker: Her Honour Judge Frances Kirkham
Ticket price: £45 each (there is now a waiting list for tickets)

Tuesday, 2nd March 6.15pm
“Procurement best value”
Speaker: Tom Connolly
Chair: Richard Bayfield
Venue: National Liberal Club, Whitehall Place , London SW1

Tuesday, 2nd March 6.00pm
“A Judge on Judging Techniques”
Speaker: His Honour Judge Simon Grenfell
Chairman: Martin Green
Venue: Brunswick Lecture Theatre, Leeds Metropolitan University
Organiser: jonathanhawkswell@scl.org.uk

Thursday, 11th March, Registration: 8.45am – 9.20am
Joint SCL /RICS/Leeds Metropolitan University half day conference
“Innovation and Change in Construction Law
Speakers: Paul Darling QC , Fiona Hammond and Peter Hibberd
Chairman: His Honour Judge Humphrey LLoyd QC
Venue: Cedar Court Hotel , Wakefield (Junction 39, M1)
Cost: £50, plus VAT
Bookings must be made directly with RICS – see booking form on the SCL website and attached to this newsletter.

Thursday, 11th March 6.00pm
“HGCRA and the Water, Process and Energy Industries”
Speaker: Edward Davies
Chairman: Peter Fenn
Venue: Pariser Building , UMIST, Manchester
Organiser: peterfenn@scl.org.uk

Tuesday, 6th April 6.15pm
“Project Information exchange ( PIX ): Protocol Guide & Toolkit:
The impact of communication protocols for construction”
Speakers: John George and Peter Goodwin
Chairman: Jonathan Hosie
Venue: National Liberal Club, Whitehall Place , London SW1

Details of further proposed meetings are at the SCL website www.scl.org.uk

Advance Notice : In association with King's College London, a conference on International Construction Law (provisional) will be held at the Strand Campus on 1 st /2 nd July. Further details will be announced during March 2004.

Charlotte Blake - SCL Consultant and Regions Project

We are delighted to announce that Council has appointed Charlotte Blake as SCL Consultant. Charlotte has resigned from Council and we thank her for considerable input on Council over the last two years. Charlotte will initially be helping us to develop and strengthen our Regional branches. Council has therefore given Charlotte the following brief:

“To review the operation and function of the regional branches in order to produce a coordinated approach to and from the UK regional branches of the society. The consultant will produce a report setting out what currently occurs and recommendations on changes and future development.”

If you have any comments, suggestions or ideas on the Regions then please email Charlotte direct at: charlotteblake@scl.org.uk

Subscriptions for 2004

Many of you have already renewed your subscription for 2004. Thank you.

For those of you who have not yet renewed, please make your payments of £100 as soon as possible in order to help us keep admin costs to a minimum. You can pay either online at the website, or send your cheque (sterling please - payable to SCL ) to the admin office.

If you have mislaid the renewal of membership invoice sent to you in December, then you can request a replacement copy from Jackie Morris at admin.

Kings Cross Redevelopment Project (CTRL)
Junior SCL Site Visit – 1 st April 2004

This is a rare opportunity to go behind the scenes (and below the ground) at what will become London 's newest International transport hub – the King's Cross/St Pancras complex.

Hosted by guides from Metronet, you will see for yourselves the current state of progress on this multi-million pound project which, when complete in 2007, will see the creation of seamless interchange for passengers using the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link, Midland Mainline, GNER, WAGN and Thameslink and the Metropolitan, Circle, Hammersmith & City, Piccadilly, Northern and Victoria Underground lines.

During the visit you will be given a presentation on the project, and visit two of the three ticket halls currently under construction beneath these two major London landmarks. You will be shown how 21 st Century construction has been designed to compliment the 19 th Century listed structures, and see for yourselves the steps being taken to ensure that passengers can continue to use the stations as reconstruction takes place.

There will be two site visits run in parallel, and approximately 30 people can be accommodated. The site visit will commence at 2.30pm and last for about 2½ hours. Complimentary drinks will be provided by Junior SCL at the end of the site visit.

If you would like to be in one of those groups then please provide your details to Nicholas Gould by email as soon as possible. The last Junior SCL site visit was extremely successful and so you are urged to respond as soon as possible as numbers will be limited and places will be allocated to those who put their name forward first. Please email your request to Nicholas Gould's secretary at mlawrence@fenwickelliott.co.uk

Ethics Group - second meeting

A second meeting of the whole group will be held on Monday 5 th April at the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, 12 Bloomsbury Square , London WC1A. Confirmation of the time of the meeting will shortly be sent to all members of the Ethics group

It is envisaged that by then the work of the subgroups will be complete, and everyone will have had a chance to review the output.  At the meeting, the subgroups' work will be discussed and the next steps determined.  

The ethics section of the website now includes related documents and links to related sites.  The private pages also include more details, including the revised timetable.

SCL in Latin America

SCL is exploring further the possibility of assisting in the setting up of a Society in Latin America . Assistance has been given, mainly in the form of advice and sharing of experience, to the Republic of Ireland , Hong Kong , Singapore and Malaysia . SCL maintains contact with equivalent Societies in Europe through the European 'umbrella' organisation, ESCL, which meets annually. It is intended to form a small group of those with an interest in Latin America  as a first step. If you or your organisation is active in South/Central America and could add to our contacts and/or knowledge for this purpose, please email Christopher Miers at christophermiers@scl.org.uk or Anthony Lavers 

Special offer for SCL members

The Centre of Construction Law & Management at King's College London, with its well-known two-year part-time MSc degree in Construction Law & Arbitration, has long enjoyed a special relationship with the SCL . In the early days, the Centre housed the SCL administration; the Centre Library still has a significant collection of construction-related law reports and journals, available for consultation by SCL members. Many of those who enrol on the MSc programme become SCL members.

Now the Centre is taking this relationship one step further. Current SCL members who are accepted on to the programme for its next entry (September 2004) will enjoy specially discounted annual programme fees in their first year. The discount is 10% from the home/EC fees of £2750 or the ‘rest of world' fees of £4350.

If you already have a degree (or equivalent professional qualification), plus at least two years' relevant experience, and have an interest in exploring construction law at graduate level, now is therefore a good time to consider applying for a place on the King's MSc. It offers four taught modules on construction law and dispute resolution over two years (including an introduction to law for non-lawyers and to construction technology for lawyers at the start), plus a dissertation. The main teaching takes place on weekday evenings September-March at the Strand Campus. The ‘home team' at King's are Professors Phillip Capper and John Uff QC, John Barber and Philip Britton, but visiting practitioners make an extensive contribution to teaching. Applications for September 2004 entry are already being considered and places will shortly start to be offered.

For a prospectus, application forms etc, e-mail Sue Hart at King's on susan.hart@kcl.ac.uk or phone her on 020 7848 2643.

SCL Website

The SCL website has been completely redesigned to make it easier to use. Members can now log in from the homepage, and stay logged in throughout the site until they log out. When you log in you will see a new navigation link to 'Members' which is where you can update your contact details, email subscriptions and data protection info - as well as search for information about other SCL members who have agreed for their data to be accessible to other members on the website (currently over 500 members). In due course some new facilities will be added for members.

Other site enhancements include:

• Easier site navigation, more sections and links from the new left-navigation on all pages except the home page.
• A News page and a separate Newsletters list page.
• Forthcoming events can now be filtered by city.
• A new 'ethics' section of the site.

If you have any questions, problems or suggestions, please contact our webmaster, Edward Peters, at Webmaster

Member benefits

Members are reminded that they may use the Construction Law library at King's College, London . However, please contact Sue Hart on 020 7848 2643 or susan.hart@kcl.ac.uk beforehand to check availability.

In addition, we have published on the website an updated list of discounts on offer to members. For example there is a 10% discount on the Construction Industry Law Letter and up to 25% discount offered on bound volumes of the Building Law Reports. Discounts are also offered on conferences, courses and books.

New members

We are pleased to welcome the following new members to the Society during December and January:

Christopher Ennis, London
John Holiday, Flintshire
Robert Graham, Isle of Man
Andrew Parker, London
Peter Shellard, Hertfordshire
Julie Rowley, Leeds
Sarah Evans, Surrey
Jubilee Easo, Bristol
Paul Matcham, London
George Ross, Stirling
David Matthews, Arbroath
Jonathan Lee, London
Guy Lane, London
Andrew Bower, Barry
Roger Williams, Surrey
Theeba Ragunathan, Surrey
Hayley Cochrane, Manchester
Wendy MacLaughlin, London
Howard Lewis, Burton on Trent
James Crooks, London
Terence Smith, Surrey
Martin Jones, Leicester
Mamas Stavrou, London
John Walmsley, London
Patrick Blake, Exeter
Allen Dyer, London
Richard Gerstein, London
John Nicolson, Ayreshire
Henry Mendel, Essex
Michael Langan, Ewell
Edward Cotter, Cork
Cameron Hill, Stirling
Nicole Geoghegan, South Woodford

And finally …

We do our very best to keep the membership records up to date but we cannot do it without your help.

Please, therefore, if you are changing your job or your Internet Service Provider, don't forget to tell us of your new postal address or your new email address so that we can keep you informed.

You can either email amendments to Jackie at the admin office or, if you prefer to do it yourself, log into the members only section of the website where you can update your own set of records.

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