{"id":537732,"date":"2026-02-10T12:45:42","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T12:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/?p=537732"},"modified":"2026-02-10T13:15:55","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T13:15:55","slug":"bylor-wins-hinkley-adjudication-fight-over-jv-chaos-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/legal\/bylor-wins-hinkley-adjudication-fight-over-jv-chaos-risk-10-02-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Bylor wins Hinkley adjudication fight over JV \u2018chaos\u2019 risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Allowing individual companies that are part of joint ventures (JVs) to pursue adjudications on their own would cause \u201cchaos\u201d, the High Court has ruled.<\/p>\n

Darchem Engineering has lost its case at the Technology and Construction Court to enforce adjudication rulings against Bylor \u2013 the Laing O\u2019Rourke and Bouygues Travaux Publics JV constructing the Hinkley Point C nuclear site.<\/p>\n

Mr Justice Constable rejected Darchem\u2019s case due to it being in an unincorporated JV with EDF-owned reactor manufacturer Framatome on the nuclear megaproject.<\/p>\n

Darchem took enforcement action against Bylor after it was awarded \u00a323.9m in three adjudications it brought independently over delays, changes to its scope of work and payment disputes.<\/p>\n

In a ruling issued on Friday (6 February), Mr Justice Constable said he was \u201cinitially doubtful\u201d of Bylor\u2019s defence that \u201cthere would be chaos if each separate part of the JV was a party\u201d, but he concluded that the argument was correct.<\/p>\n

If each of the four companies in the client and contractor JVs were treated as separate parties and a dispute arose over a payment certificate, Bouygues and Laing O\u2019Rourke could both separately start an adjudication against both Darchem and Framatome, he said.<\/p>\n

He said this could lead to them choosing different adjudicators to decide on the same issue at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not apparent what procedural mechanism the contract envisages to prevent such a situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If the contract in the case had been meant to allow companies within JVs to bring proceedings on their own, \u201cone would reasonably expect the contractual machinery to contain clearer and more comprehensive procedural safeguards\u201d to prevent the \u201cchaos\u201d of simultaneous adjudications, the judge added.<\/p>\n

Paul Buckingham KC had argued<\/a> that the contract on the job said that Darchem and Framatome could act both jointly and separately and that they were described as separate parties in certain contract clauses.<\/p>\n

But the judge said he agreed with Bylor\u2019s case, put forward by Jessica Stephens KC, that the contract\u2019s wording indicated it referred to an agreement between two parties, rather than four.<\/p>\n

This was supported by areas in the contract where there were specific references to insolvency issues and parent-company guarantees, where the contract made it clear it was talking about individual entities within a joint venture only within those paragraphs, he ruled.<\/p>\n

Bylor had argued during the earlier adjudications that Darchem was unable to bring the cases because it was not a party to the contract on its own, but the adjudicator rejected its position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Allowing individual companies that are part of joint ventures (JVs) to pursue adjudications on their own would cause \u201cchaos\u201d, the High Court has ruled. Darchem Engineering has lost its case at the Technology and Construction Court to enforce adjudication rulings against Bylor \u2013 the Laing O\u2019Rourke and Bouygues Travaux Publics JV constructing the Hinkley Point …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43915,"featured_media":493048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[530,537,578],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-537732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bouygues","category-laing-orourke","category-legal"],"yoast_head":"\nBylor wins Hinkley adjudication fight over JV \u2018chaos\u2019 risk | Construction News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Allowing individual companies that are part of joint ventures (JVs) to pursue adjudications on their own would cause \u201cchaos\u201d, the High Court has ruled.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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