A party to a construction contract may apply to the Chairperson to have an Adjudicator appointed to a payment dispute pursuant to Section 6(4) of the Construction Contracts Act, 2013. The payment dispute must have arisen in relation to a construction contract entered into after 25 July 2016. If an application is to be made to the Chairperson of the Construction Contracts Adjudication Panel, it shall be made not earlier than five days from and including the day on which the Notice of Intention to Refer the Payment Dispute for Adjudication was served.
An applicant has the option to apply for the appointment of an Adjudicator under section 6(4) of the Construction Contracts Act 2013 as follows:
The Construction Contracts Adjudication Service cannot process an application received by email in order to protect the confidentiality of all parties. Therefore, an applicant should not email their application to the Construction Contracts Adjudication Service.
The applicant is required to send a copy of the application form and the accompanying documentation to the Respondent Party/Parties at the same time the application is submitted to the Chairperson, whether the Electronic version or the Word version of the application form is used. The Construction Contracts Adjudication Service does not provide a copy of the application form and the accompanying documentation to the Respondent Party/Parties as this is the responsibility of the applicant.
In accordance with paragraph 15 of the Code of Practice Governing the Conduct of Adjudications an application made to the Chairperson to appoint an Adjudicator from the Panel of Adjudicators to a payment dispute must include the following information:
When making an application, the applicant must therefore ensure that the correct legal identity, address and contact details of the other party or parties is provided to the Construction Contracts Adjudication Service at the time an application is made to the Chairperson. The Construction Contracts Adjudication Service will use this information to put all parties on notice of the application, and these contact details will be relied upon by the appointed Adjudicator when contacting the parties. The Construction Contracts Adjudication Service cannot accept any responsibility for an omission or mistake made by the applicant in relation to the above details.
In accordance with paragraphs 6, 19 and 36 of the ‘Code of Practice Governing the Conduct of Adjudications’, a prospective Adjudicator should only accept an appointment to a payment dispute under the Construction Contracts Act, 2013 if they are able to give the time and attention which the parties to the dispute are reasonably entitled to expect; if they believe that they are competent to determine the issues in dispute; and if they are satisfied that no conflict of interest exists between the prospective Adjudicator and the parties to the dispute.
As and from 1 December 2021 in order to assist a prospective Adjudicator to make such a determination, when the Chairperson enquires as to the availability of a prospective Adjudicator for a particular dispute, the Chairperson will provide them with a copy of the document ‘Notice of Intention to refer the Payment Dispute for Adjudication’.
If an applicant wishes to apply to the Chairperson to have an Adjudicator appointed to a number of payment disputes arising under the same construction contract or related construction contracts, separate applications must be submitted for each individual payment dispute setting out the above mentioned information in order to comply with the Code of Practice governing the conduct of adjudications. A single application which refers to multiple payments disputes arising under the same construction contract or related construction contracts will not be accepted by the Construction Contracts Adjudication Service.
Note on opening the Electronic form in a web browser: Due to the interactive nature of the Construction Contracts Adjudication Application form (PDF version), users of Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox may experience problems completing the form correctly. These problems are caused as these browsers use their own inbuilt PDF viewers. It is recommended that you download the PDF file to your computer and then open it in Adobe Reader.
In order to do this, right-click on the form link and save the file to a location on your computer. Once saved, open that location on your computer and then open the saved file in Adobe Reader. If Adobe Reader is not installed on your computer, it can be downloaded free from the Adobe website: get.adobe.com/reader
It is also recommended that users of other browsers who experience similar problems should also download the PDF file to your computer and then open it in Adobe Reader.
Form No 5 - Application to the Chairperson for Appointment of Adjudicator