The Centre of Construction Law & Dispute Resolution at King’s College London, working in collaboration with The Adjudication Society, produced a report, 2022 Construction Adjudication in the United Kingdom: Tracing trends and guiding reform which can be accessed here. The report found that only 7.88% of Adjudicators in the UK are women.
The Adjudication Society wants to improve this statistic and produced the following Pledge to highlight this specific problem and ‘force’ all those involved with adjudication to consider nominating, short-listing, or agreeing to a female adjudicator.
Positive, proactive support for the Pledge from across the construction law and adjudication world (as evidenced by signing the Pledge) is vital. That is why, on 18 April 2023, Myerson signed the Pledge.
Our Construction Law team actively promote the Pledge to our construction lawyers, clients and contacts and hope they will join us in making meaningful and continued commitments to achieving better representation in adjudication – sign the Pledge here.
The Pledge:
As a group of contractors, subcontractors, developers, legal representatives, quantity surveyors, engineers, architects, claims consultants, adjudicators, academics and others involved in the adjudication of construction disputes, we are committed to improving the profile and representation of women as adjudicators.
In particular, we consider that women should be appointed as adjudicators on an equal opportunity basis. To achieve this, we will take the steps reasonably available to us – and we will encourage other participants in adjudication to do likewise – to ensure that, wherever possible:
- Committees, governing bodies and conference panels in the field of adjudication include a fair representation of women;
- Lists of potential adjudicators provided to or considered by parties, legal representatives (including in-house counsel) or otherwise include a fair representation of female candidates;
- Adjudicator Nominating Bodies (ANBs) include a fair representation of female candidates on their rosters and lists of potential adjudicator appointees, where maintained by them;
- Where they have the power to do so, legal representatives, adjudicators, representatives of corporates and ANBs will, when appointing adjudicators, advance equality of opportunity between male adjudicators and female adjudicators;
- Gender characteristic statistics for appointments are collated and made publicly available by the ANBs and any other institutions collating data on adjudication;
- Senior and experienced adjudication practitioners support, mentor/sponsor and encourage women to pursue adjudication appointments and otherwise enhance their profiles and practice.
