Joint ICE/SCL seminar: The Building Safety Act 2022 an in-depth look at the legal and practical impacts

Richard Bayfield

Richard is the Chair the ICE Ethics Committee and currently the ICE Trustee responsible for ethics. Richard’s civil engineering career comprises senior roles as a contractor, consultant and client. He has also studied law and was Chair of the Society of Construction Law in 2003/4. He is one of four civil engineers who have been made Honorary Members of the society. In 2006 he was appointed to the construction minister’s sounding board of six, chaired by the late Sir Michael Latham, which advised on proposed changes to UK construction legislation.

His early career began with Costain working on major projects including the Thames Barrier. The latter part of his career has involved working with large client organisations including Honda, UCL, New College Oxford, and the Church Commissioners. These client leadership roles have subsequently attracted peer awards for successful project delivery. The client role has majored on establishing a positive project culture, clear project governance and pro-active risk management processes. Richard occasionally lectures and writes about client leadership, including methods such as early warnings and conflict avoidance strategies to establish a true collaborative culture.

Richard often acts as an independent project advisor providing a second opinion or peer review on the status of a project. Sometimes this may be formalised into an Adjudicator’s Decision. Frequently such advice is obtained to avoid a formal dispute. Richard was previously appointed to dispute panels for Terminal 5 and the London 2012 Olympics.

Dame Judith Hackitt

Dame Judith Hackitt is a chemical engineer by training and spent her early career working in the chemicals industry – both in manufacturing and also as an advocate for the industry at national and international level. She is a former President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and a Fellow and Trustee of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Throughout her career she has championed the importance of Engineering in delivering solutions which provide benefit to society and has been a role model particularly for young women wanting to enter the profession. Her current non-Exec roles are based around her continued passion for Manufacturing and Engineering. She is Chair of Enginuity, Senior Independent Non-Exec at the High Value Manufacturing Catapult and a Board member of HS2.

She cares deeply about safety in the workplace and more broadly. From 2007 to 2016 she was Chair of the Health and Safety Executive and in 2017 conducted an Independent Review for UK Government into Building Regulations and Fire Safety in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster. Since publishing her final report in 2018 she has continued to press for regulatory change and for industry culture change and her recommendations for radical reform of the regulatory system recently received Royal Assent in the Building Safety Act 2022.

Amy Lacey

Amy is a solicitor and partner at Fenchurch Law. She specialises in advice on insurance coverage issues, with a focus on construction and property risks. Amy has extensive experience of litigation, arbitration and alternative forms of dispute resolution, arising from engineering projects, infrastructure, commercial property, residential developments and hotels.

She has acted for financial institutions, owners, contractors and consultants on many complex multi-jurisdictional claims, including recoveries under property, business interruption, construction all risks, latent defects, professional indemnity and public liability policies.In Legal 500, Amy is ranked as a Next Generation Partner - Insurance Litigation: For policyholders. She is an elected member of Council for the Society of Construction Law and a member of its Social and London Lectures Programme sub-committees.

Robert Evans

Robert Evans began his career as a civil engineer, working for international consultants and contractors in the UK and in Hong Kong.

He was called to the Bar in 1989 and became a member of Keating Chambers in 1990. Robert utilises his strong civil engineering background and is often instructed in disputes with highly technical issues as a result.

Robert predominately acts as arbitrator, adjudicator and mediator in international and domestic disputes.

He is a CEDR accredited mediator, and a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers’ panels of arbitrators and adjudicators. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and is a member and past chairman of the ICE Dispute Resolution Panel.

As counsel, Robert specialised in construction, engineering and energy disputes and professional negligence work in the UK and abroad.

Hamish Lal

Hamish Lal is ranked Band 1 in both construction and international construction arbitration in Chambers & Partners UK, and in the top tier in the UK Legal 500. He is Adjunct Professor at University College Dublin Sutherland School of Law; Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators; a Fulbright Scholar; author of Manual of Construction Agreements published by LexisNexis; and General Editor of Construction Law Journal published by Sweet & Maxwell. Hamish is Chair of the Adjudication Society; Chair of The Society of Construction Law; and Chair of the Oriel College Law Society.

Michael Attwell

Michael has in excess of 20 years professional indemnity underwriting experience and has spent the majority of those specialising in construction professionals. He has provided solutions to firms of all sizes including the very largest global consultants. As well as working as a Senior Underwriter for the corporate business within Munich Re, Michael is the founding chair of the Construction Working Group, a group of construction professional indemnity underwriters as part of the Insurance Underwriting Association’s Professional Indemnity forum

Zoe de Courcy Arbiser

Zoe is a Infrastructure Sector Partner at Pinsent Masons. Zoe spent 8 years in Hong Kong where she was a founding member of the Lighthouse Women in Construction Group, supporting women in the industry in Asia and raising awareness of construction safety issues, before returning to practice in England in 2015.

Zoe is dual-qualified in both Hong Kong and England & Wales, with experience in advising on a wide range of dispute resolution procedures in the sector. She has extensive experience of advising throughout the project lifecycle to manage risk and resolve disputes via mediation, adjudication, arbitration and TCC proceedings. She is particularly known for her “common sense approach to problem solving”, leading to successful resolution of long-running, large and complex disputes.

She is currently acting for a number of contractors, developers and investors in relation to building contract claims across the UK, and on significant multi-party PFI disputes relating to alleged service failures and legacy defects. Zoe leads on the firm’s PFI/PPP project support service and building safety disputes, and sits on a number of building safety steering committees advising on regulatory reform across the sector.

Zoe is a main committee member of the Technology and Construction Solicitors' Association (TECSA) and a member of the TECSA Adjudication Sub-Committee.

Stephen Brookhouse

Stephen Brookhouse is a chartered architect and of Professional Practice in Architecture at the University of Westminster. His career has spanned commercial architectural practice and postgraduate teaching. He lectures widely on professional practice issues in the UK and internationally and is a consultant and adviser to a number of leading international architectural practices. As a non-executive director of the Architects Registration Board he led on the development of the architectural profession’s competence requirements on Fire and Life safety. He is also an author.