Specialists International
This Knowledge Check examines Darchem Engineering Limited's application to enforce an adjudicator's award of GBP 23,944,012. The subcontract connected two unincorporated joint ventures involved in stainless-steel works for Hinkley Point C.
Darchem commenced adjudication alone, although the subcontractor joint venture, EDEL, comprised Darchem and Framatome. The main-contractor joint venture, BYLOR, challenged jurisdiction because Darchem was not itself the defined subcontracting Party.
The court construed the agreement, conditions and subcontract data as a whole. It held that the contract was bilateral between the two joint ventures, joint and several liability did not make each member a separate Party, and Darchem could not invoke the adjudication clause in its own right.
- The two unincorporated joint ventures
- The three adjudications commenced by Darchem
- The defined Contractor, Subcontractor and Parties
- The dispute-resolution provisions in Option W
- The bilateral drafting of the subcontract conditions
- The joint and several liability provision
- The notified-leader machinery in clause 12.6
- The order-of-precedence argument
- The risk of parallel adjudications
- The refusal of summary enforcement