Baker Merz Construction Lawyers is a leading provider of specialised legal services, with dual accreditation from both the Law Society and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
Why engage a Law Firm that needs to be assisted by a "team of experts" when you have access to our Construction Experts that develop 100s of projects before coming into the law.
Our extensive expertise in project development, encompassing areas like construction management, estimating, and design engineering, ensures we understand the practical challenges on-site. Our lawyers hold industry-leading certifications, such as MCIBSE, MAIPM, CIARB, MRICS and C.Eng. This guarantees that your issues are handled by professionals who combine legal expertise with hands-on industry knowledge.
We offer tailored solutions for cost or delay claims in-house, ensuring efficient resolutions. As QBCC Adjudicators, we provide expert representation in disputes under the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act, covering matters related to defects, costs, and licensing disputes. Our legal services span across various courts, including magistrates, tribunals, district, and supreme courts, ensuring comprehensive representation.
We are dedicated to providing clear, concise advice based on extensive construction industry experience.
Our hands-on experience across both engineering and construction allows us to offer comprehensive contract reviews and analyses. We provide detailed insights into every aspect of your contracts, including rights, obligations, liabilities, and scopes.
We are well-versed in various contractual frameworks, including Australian Standard Contracts (AS4000 and AS2124 Series), Australian Building Industry Contracts (ABIC), and Master Builders Association (MBA) agreements. Additionally, we possess extensive knowledge of international contracts such as FIDIC, NEC4, and JCT, ensuring that your project complies with the Security of Payments Act.
Before finalising any contract, we perform thorough pre-contract audits to assess potential risks and propose modifications where necessary. Our goal is to mitigate high-risk elements and ensure that the contract safeguards your interests, preventing unexpected liabilities.
We provide complete contract analysis services to review key contract terms, identify issues, and evaluate claims. This process includes a thorough examination of drawings, technical specifications, and site records to assess the cause, merit, and impact of claims. Whether representing contractors, subcontractors, or clients, our industry experience allows us to craft targeted strategies for dispute resolution.
Our claims are presented clearly and precisely in plain English, supported by Critical Path Method (CPM) delay analyses and cost breakdowns, along with the necessary evidence. This ensures your claim is positioned for success.
Before submitting any matter to Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC) adjudication, we carefully evaluate whether affidavits or expert reports are needed to bolster the claim. Our extensive experience navigating QBCC disputes ensures that your claims are robust and prepared to stand up to scrutiny.
We also represent clients in both formal and informal dispute proceedings, including briefing counsel and barristers on your behalf. Our expertise extends across tribunals and the Supreme Court, giving you confidence that we can handle even the most complex legal matters from start to finish.
Our firm offers in-house expertise in planning and scheduling to accurately assess the impact of project delays. We analyse baseline schedules and update progress reports to perform prospective and retrospective time-impact analyses.
We help identify the root causes of delays, including concurrent delays, and accurately apportion liability. Using data-driven methods, such as the earned value and measured mile approaches, we quantify disruption claims, ensuring they are based on solid, auditable evidence. Our approach to disruption claims ensures transparency and credibility.
In addition, we prepare acceleration claims, assessing the merits and calculating the quantum of such claims while determining eligibility for extensions of time (EoT). We also offer independent third-party reports to provide you with a clear understanding of your position in a dispute.
Inadequate project planning, poor schedule tracking, and weak contract management are often the causes of costly delays and overruns. At Baker Merz, we aim to prevent such issues by focusing on proactive contract and financial recovery strategies.
We integrate our legal, engineering, and quantity surveying expertise to help clients develop procurement and contracting strategies that reduce project risks. We handle claims management, allowing your construction and contracts management teams to focus on delivery.
This approach ensures better cash flow management from the start and reduces administrative costs. Our legal team has the necessary construction expertise to quickly address cost, schedule, or scope issues as they arise, keeping your project on course for success.
We assist developers in forming effective joint ventures by connecting them with the right partners through teaming agreements. Our broad network in the construction sector allows us to facilitate these connections for successful collaborations.
We also assist clients in preparing proposals and economic cases to secure project funding from financial institutions, both domestically and internationally. Whether through desktop studies, preliminary financial studies (PFS), or feasibility studies (FS), we ensure that the right project structures and contracts—such as design & construct (D&C), engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC), or engineering, procurement, and construction management (EPCM)—are chosen.
We are also involved in the engineering, procurement, and construction installation (ECI) phase if required and can assist in obtaining necessary planning and authority approvals. Furthermore, we prepare essential legal documentation, including teaming agreements, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), expressions of interest (EOIs), and requests for tender (RFTs).
Fast-tracked projects often experience defects that are challenging to resolve, especially if the issues are hidden underground. We provide a comprehensive range of legal and technical advice to address rectifiable and unrectifiable defects.
Our insurance services include advice on owner or contractor self-insurance and decennial insurance options. We have handled major insurance claims for clients ranging from government bodies to statutory authorities.
Our expertise includes interpreting and drafting policies, managing recovery actions, providing advice on indemnity and subrogation issues, and representing clients in dealings with insurers in Sunshine Coast.
“I am extremely grateful
for your professional assistance in this matter. Four different law firms and no one has taught us about these procedures before, thank you.”
“They had a building full of lawyers against the two of us. We would not have prevailed without your technical and construction knowledge.”
“I thought I was losing my business... thank you.”
Some 50% of our clients settle their disputes even before legal action commences. This is because we prepare fully substantiated cost and delay claims that deal with defects, variations, valuation, disruption, and payment disputes on their projects with a solid contractual/legal argument that leads to commercial negotiations and early settlement.
With 30 years of experience participating in design engineering teams and on-site construction (for leading companies CPB, CIMIC, Lend Lease, AECOM, Fluor, Nova, Parsons, WSP, High Commission for KSA), we guarantee our complete understanding of the issues that arise on construction sites and understand the perspectives of all participants and stakeholders involved in a building dispute - we likely already dealt with a dispute involving similar circumstances to what brought you to this website.
Why Choose us?
Contact us today for exceptional legal solutions backed by practical construction knowledge.
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