Construction
The dispute is in the change orders.
Construction files turn on documents nobody wants to read: the baseline programme, the as-built, the fourteenth revision of a scope letter. I read them. That is most of what a construction mediation needs, and it is the work that happens before the day.
What comes up
The disputes.
Commercial construction and infrastructure. Owner, contractor, subcontractor and consultant.
- Lien claims
- Priority, holdback, trust and set-off arguments running alongside the substantive dispute rather than instead of it.
- Delay and disruption
- Concurrency, float ownership, acceleration, and the gap between a critical-path analysis and what actually happened on site.
- Change orders and scope
- Directed change, constructive change, and the familiar position that the work was always in the base scope.
- Deficiencies
- Whether the work meets the specification, whether the specification was buildable, and what the cost to correct actually is.
- Subcontract and payment
- Pay-when-paid, back-charges, and the disputes that surface when a prompt-payment clock starts running.
- Consultant and design
- Coordination failures, errors and omissions, and the split between design responsibility and means and methods.
Why me
Litigation exposure in the same matters, and an engineer who reads the record.
Construction is one of the matter types behind my active litigation exposure at a Toronto litigation and ADR boutique. That is not a claim to have decided construction cases. It is a claim to know how these files are actually built, what a set of productions looks like, and which arguments survive contact with a schedule.
The second half is the one worth being specific about. I work as an infrastructure engineer, so a programme, a delay analysis and a set of site records are documents I can interrogate rather than take on trust from whichever expert explains them most confidently. In a construction mediation that is usually where the day is won or lost.
The machinery
These disputes now run inside a statutory timetable.
Which changes what a mediation or an arbitration is for.
Interim adjudication. Part II.1 of the Construction Act — "Construction Dispute Interim Adjudication" — has been in force since 1 October 2019. An adjudicator must determine the referred matter no later than 30 days after receiving the referring party's documents, and a determined amount is payable within 15 days of the determination being communicated. Judicial review is available only with leave of the Divisional Court.
A designated authority runs it. The Act empowers the Minister to designate an Authorized Nominating Authority, and Ontario Dispute Adjudication for Construction Contracts — ODACC — states on its own site that it is that authority.
Prompt payment sets the clock. Part I.1 came into force on the same day. A proper invoice goes to the owner monthly unless the contract says otherwise; the owner pays within 28 days unless it delivers a notice of non-payment; and a contractor paid in full pays each subcontractor within seven days.
And arbitration is where it lands. The Act treats an adjudicator's determination as interim — binding until the matter is finally decided in a court proceeding, by written agreement, or by arbitration under the Arbitration Act, 1991. The Act creates no mediation process of its own. So the question a party is actually choosing between is which of those three finally resolves it, and how quickly.
Described so the process is legible, not applied to anyone's file. Everything above is sourced in docs/reference/ontario-construction-act.md against the Act itself; what it means for a particular contract is a question for each party's own counsel.
The context
Ontario is building, and building generates disputes.
Ontario Power Generation holds a licence to construct a BWRX-300 small modular reactor at Darlington, granted by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in April 2025, and applied in March 2026 for a licence to operate it. Bruce Power has a federal impact assessment under way for the Bruce C project, aimed at creating an option for up to 4,800 megawatts at the existing site, with reactor technology not yet selected.
Programmes on that scale run for years, through dozens of trade contracts, and they produce exactly the disputes above. This practice is built to facilitate procurement and subcontract disputes on that pipeline. I am naming it as the shape of the market, not as a list of files — nothing here is a claim to be on any of these projects.
The process
And how it would run.
The area is the subject matter. The process is what the parties are choosing between, and each of these describes one — the formats, the rules, and what a party is expected to do and when.
Next step
Start with a call.
Tell me the shape of the matter and who is involved, and I will tell you whether I am the right neutral for it. Inquiries are answered within two business days.