Susan Lindsey’s practice is focused on building and engineering related dispute resolution. She has considerable experience in acting as an adjudicator on a range of disputes, and has also accepted arbitral and mediation appointments. Susan is experienced in construction disciplinary proceedings and undertakes appointments as legal advisor to disciplinary boards. She is an accredited adjudicator (Technology & Construction Bar Association) and is on the RIBA adjudication panel.
As counsel Susan has experience of a wide spectrum of construction and engineering contract claims, including defects, delay and final account claims, under both standard and bespoke contract forms. She also has considerable experience in negligence claims against construction professionals having acted for both claimants and defendants, and has also acted in construction professional disciplinary proceedings both as party representative and as legal advisor to the tribunal. She has also acted in fee recovery claims made by engineers, architects, surveyors and adjudicators.
Before coming to the Bar Susan qualified and practised as a chartered architect. Her architectural experience mainly comprised medium to large-scale commercial projects, in particular hotels and retail, and included being both office and site based. She has practical experience of acting as a certifying architect in traditional contracting arrangements, and of design and build procurement acting for employers, contractors and for a developer / contractor joint venture.
Susan contributes a chapter to Emden’s Construction Law on the subject of variations, and regularly writes the editorial in the Construction Law Journal.
Susan has given seminars to other practitioners and to architects on subjects within her field of practice. She has occasionally led professional conduct teaching sessions at the Inns of Court School of Law, and regularly gives lectures about architects’ liabilities to student architects undergoing their final professional practice training. She also occasionally acts as an external tutor to students undertaking the MSc in Construction Law and Arbitration at Kings College London.
Susan welcomes public access clients.
Adjudication
Susan has considerable experience in acting as an adjudicator on a range of disputes, and has also accepted arbitral appointments. She is an accredited adjudicator (Technology and Construction Bar Association) and is on the RIBA adjudication panel, and the CIArb arbitration panel. Susan has been appointed to decide:
- Defective works / remedial works claims
- Delay claims
- Final account claims
- Plant related and plant hire disputes
- Professional negligence disputes
- Repudiatory breach / termination disputes
Selected Cases
- Pring & St Hill Ltd v C H Hafner (2004) 20 Const LJ 402 – Adjudication enforcement.
ADR
Susan is a chartered arbitrator. Susan’s arbitration experience includes acting as arbitrator, and, as party representative, acting in M&E disputes and fees and other professional disputes. She was instructed as a Treasury Junior defending a very large final account claim brought against the Ministry of Defence for in excess of £80M that encompassed numerous separately pleaded sub claims.
Selected Cases
- Royal Bank of Scotland v Chandra [2010] EWHC 105 (Ch); [2010] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 677 – Duties owed by bank to sureties of customer’s liabilities under building contract.
Construction & Engineering
Susan’s technical background has been of value in her practice as both counsel, tribunal and mediator, and she has experience of dealing with a very wide range of technical matters, including:
- Alleged land failure in relation to maintenance of inland waterways
- Cable breaks and severance
- Cabling affixed to structures
- Claims in respect of asbestos management services
- Coal mining subsidence
- Concrete and screed failures
- Failure of an underground pumping station and drains constructed in sand subject to tidal variations in
- Failure of cob structure (a traditional mud and straw form of construction)
- Failure of deep piled excavations
- Failure of temporary support during construction operations
- Flooding and drainage failures
- Fire claims
- Liability in relation to Japanese knotweed incursion
- Metallurgical failures
- Oil spills and remediation
- Provision of mechanical handling equipment and logistics services
- Ground water level
- Service and maintenance of heavy goods vehicles
- Slope failures
- Subsidence on landfill sites
- Tree root subsidence
International Arbitration
Susan acted numerous times as party representative in mediations, and now focuses on acting as mediator. She has found her technical background and experience within the construction industry of significant benefit in this forum. The disputes in which Susan has acted as mediator have included professional negligence issues as well as more general property related matters.
Selected Cases
- Nigel Witham Ltd v Smith & Issacs [2008] EWHC 12 (TCC); 117 Con LR 117; [2008] TCLR 3; [2008] CILL 2557 – Costs effect of a party declining to engage in mediation at a particular stage of a dispute.
Qualifications
- Chartered Architect
- Chartered Arbitrator
- Accredited Adjudicator
- Accredited Mediator
- MSc Construction Law, Kings College London (1994)
- Diploma in Architecture, UCL, Bartlett School of Architecture (1990)
- BSc Architecture, UCL, Bartlett School of Architecture (1987)
Memberships
- Chartered Institute of Arbitrators
- Royal Institute of British Architects
- (current Chair of RIBA President’s Advisory Committee on Dispute Resolution)
- Technology and Construction Bar Association
- Professional Negligence Bar Association