Beumer Group UK Ltd v Vinci Construction UK Ltd

Adjudication decisions will ordinarily be enforced summarily because adjudication provides interim finality. The court will decline enforcement for breach of natural justice only where the proceedings were plainly and obviously unfair. An adjudicator may conduct simultaneous adjudications involving one party, but must disclose that circumstance where it creates a real risk that relevant information or submissions in the other adjudication will be unavailable to the opposing party. In closely connected adjudications, the affected party must have a fair opportunity to address relevant material and seek disclosure. A breach is material where the withheld opportunity concerns an issue central to the adjudicator’s decision, even though the court cannot predict what result the adjudicator would have reached.

Beumer sought summary judgment enforcing an adjudicator’s decision in its dispute with Vinci concerning whether three instructions were compensation events under an NEC3 sub-contract. The same adjudicator was simultaneously conducting a related adjudication between Beumer and its sub-sub-contractor, Logan. Vinci was unaware of that adjudication and of Beumer’s materially inconsistent position concerning the date on which the works had reached airport operational readiness.

The application raised whether the inconsistent cases, the undisclosed parallel adjudication, and the absence of access to relevant material denied Vinci natural justice. It also raised whether the adjudicator was required to disclose his concurrent appointment.

1. Enforcement refused. The adjudicator’s decision was not enforced because the failure to disclose the concurrent adjudication, together with the resulting denial of an opportunity to address relevant material, constituted a plainly material breach of natural justice.
2. Adjudication provides interim finality and decisions are generally enforced despite errors of fact or law. The court intervenes only in the plainest cases, where the manner of proceeding was obviously unfair: [2005] EWCA Civ 1358.
3. Natural justice required both an opportunity to present and meet the case and an impartial tribunal. Although an adjudicator may ordinarily conduct simultaneous adjudications, acting concurrently in another adjudication involving one party must be disclosed. The obligation applied whether or not the disputes concerned the same project.
4. The two adjudications were closely connected. Beumer advanced one case that the works were ready for AOR on 16 December 2015 and another that they remained incomplete in April 2016. Vinci should at least have received the relevant pleadings or equivalent submissions from the parallel adjudication, or have had the opportunity to seek an order for their disclosure.
5. Under Option W2.3(4), the adjudicator had power to require further information or other action necessary to reach a decision. Vinci was denied the opportunity to invoke that power. The Scheme’s provisions concerning related disputes did not apply, and could not be imported by analogy into Option W2.
6. The withheld material was material because the date of AOR was relevant to delay, and delay was central to whether the instructions were compensation events. It was unnecessary to predict the adjudicator’s likely decision. The adjudicator’s careful consideration of the material actually before him did not cure the unfairness. The court did not decide whether the instructions were in fact compensation events; that issue remained for further adjudication or final resolution.