Biography
Ben specialises in Construction and Engineering and is based in our Sheffield office. He has a wealth of experience from supporting the more senior members of the team and working on both contentious and non-contentious work. He works with the firm’s developer, contractor and consultant clients.
Ben also assists Corporate, Commercial, Banking and Insolvency colleagues by providing advice to their clients as required when Construction and Engineering matters arise. He specifically advises in areas such as mergers and acquisitions, financing and administration and liquidation.
Ben went on secondment with one of the UK’s leading independent engineering and services businesses working across a variety of sectors within the building and infrastructure industries both in the UK and abroad.
Recent Highlights:
- Negotiated contracts with European companies to install specialist engineering equipment, worth approximately £8m, at a client’s manufacturing and distribution premises with the aim of streamlining its processes for long-term cost savings.
- Reported for the purposes of client due diligence on a number of construction contracts and framework agreements and entered into by a number of target companies in anticipation of strategic regional acquisitions by a large specialist national contractor.
- Advised on extensions of time and applications for loss and expense to a foreign-based specialist sub-contractor client in relation to various deductions, omissions and variations made by the contractor of a £2.9m sub-contract relating to part of the works for a development in London.
- Drafted, negotiated and completed a suite of consultant appointments in respect of the client’s development of a south-coast mixed-use industrial and distribution site and associated infrastructure and landscaping works, to incorporate the requirements of a prospective long-term tenant.
- Advised an insolvency practitioner on the prospects of and evidence for recovering monies from the employer under the JCT Design & Build post-termination contractual set-off procedure. Negotiating with the employer’s lawyers by correspondence ahead of a without prejudice meeting.
- Drafted and negotiated all the construction appointments for the multi-million pound phased redevelopment of an architecturally significant site in Manchester.
- Advised an M&E sub-contractor on the merits of a potential negligence claim against an M&E design consultant on a college construction project in Hull. At the same time advised on the anticipated merits of a final account payment dispute threatened by the client’s mechanical sub-sub-contractor.
Publications:
‘Nuanced Regulations Post-Grenfell’: on the impact of The Building (Amendment) Regulations 2018 (S.I. 2018/1230) to ban the use of combustible materials in some parts of certain high-rise buildings, Architecture Magazine, February 2019
‘Adjudication: ‘the good can and should be severed from the bad’: case comment on the decision in Willow Corp S.à.r.l v MTD Contractors Limited [2019] EWHC 1591 (TCC), The Construction Index, 8 July 2019
