Before shovel to earth, it’s pen to paper
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Take a stroll in downtown Vancouver, Calgary or Toronto, and you’ll feel the frustration. Drivers lean on their horns, stuck in car jams caused by road delays. Half-finished buildings litter the skyline. Sure, it’s easy to blame the disappearing (or striking) trades who can’t seem to finish what they start. But have you ever considered the billion-dollar question: With costs mounting by the minute, who’s on the hook? What no one sees is the frustration of those in charge - the engineers, architects, contractors - who, against all odds, are sweating to build Canada’s commercial infrastructure. “Typically, we’re on their side,” says Bob Jenkins, construction litigator at Jenkins Marzban Logan LLP in Vancouver, and member of the Canadian College of Construction Lawyers (CCCL), an association of about 75 specialists from across the country who meet at yearly conferences - including this weekend - to swap industry contacts and bone up on the newest legal rules. For these men and women, sorting out who pays when construction goes awry - from condos to shopping malls to transit systems to dams - is all in a day’s work. Until a dispute erupts, they may seem invisible, but, in fact, construction lawyers are behind every transaction from the get-go, drafting the complex contracts upon which the construction we see everywhere is based. More : theglobeandmail.com |