Infrastructure
Bexley Beaumont: An award-winning boutique law firm with an inclusive and collaborative team culture and an uncompromising approach to quality aligning the interests of both clients and lawyers. Senior experienced lawyers with a wealth of commercial acumen acting as trusted advisors providing legal solutions across all commercial disciplines.
The infrastructure sector is experiencing unprecedented pressure. Demand is high and budgets are being squeezed. The supply chain is struggling with both inflation and supply. Lenders are tightening controls and directors are keenly aware that the consequences of poor decision making can be catastrophic.
This storm can be weathered by demonstrable compliance. The private sector must perform its obligations and must be able to show that it has done so. This in turn allows the public sector to justify the continued involvement of the private sector. Meanwhile, there are opportunities in this pressured environment for the private sector, as the public sector’s partner, to show its ability to innovate and to draw solutions from other projects and other sectors.
This applies to all bilateral infrastructure contracts with public authorities – including the Highways Agency, Network Rail, the MoD and local authorities. Nowhere does it come into sharper focus than in relation to PFI. Once the key to unlocking private funding, now no longer in vogue, on the public side PFI looks expensive and inflexible. On the private side, PFI projects are complex, heavy on resourcing and carry a more onerous risk profile than other procurements. Many of these projects are approaching expiry and the challenges of handback will further exacerbate these pressures.
Bexley Beaumont’s partners have extensive first-class experience in this sector, reaching back over 20 years and covering sectors as diverse as street lighting, health, education, roads, waste and defence. They are versed in the interests and challenges of lenders, subcontractors, main contractors (or SPVs) and authorities. Such holistic experience is rare and is precisely what projects currently need.
Our flexible structure allows for deployment to suit your needs: whether on a one-off contract interpretation; to support your team through the complexity of a termination or dispute mechanism; or to offer strategic input on a retainer basis to support optimal handback.
Our areas of expertise are:
- Familiarity with all standard forms used in all sectors and the typical approach taken in relation to them by parties involved.
- Acting for all parties including contractors, hard and soft FM subcontractors, authorities, and lenders.
- Support throughout the lifecycle of a project, starting with project structuring and inception, procurement, delivery, dealing with variations, performance issues, disputes, and termination, through to expiry and handback.
- Management of issues arising so as to avoid, minimise or manage disputes to their optimal outcome.
- In depth knowledge and guidance in relation to all dispute mechanisms, with partners holding experience of acting as expert and adjudicator in construction and infrastructure disputes (including in relation to extensions of time and quantification of damages claims).
Our Infrastructure Team
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