Professor Doug Jones AO
International arbitrator
Sydney · London · Toronto
KEYNOTE: Who Disputes That There Is a Dispute
The Challenge of Diversity of Expertise in International Construction Dispute Resolution
Effective dispute resolution in international construction depends on deploying the right technical and legal expertise. Professor Jones examines how that need can be recognised, and how diversity of expertise can be deployed on dispute boards and in arbitral tribunals, where lawyers have come to dominate.
The address
To enable effective dispute resolution in international construction it is important that there be deployed expertise, both technical and legal, suitable to the project and the issue requiring resolution.
Many projects benefit immensely from dispute boards assisting the parties to resolve issues before they develop into full-scale disputation, and in that context, there must be deployed subject matter expertise applicable to the project, including its place of performance, and the nature of the work being performed. Technical expertise must be accompanied by legal expertise, local and international, enabling dispute boards to tread confidently through, and apply, the contract.
The membership of international and domestic arbitration tribunals has recently been dominated by lawyers. In times gone by technical experts have had a greater role as tribunal members delivering just outcomes consistent with the issues in dispute. There is a present challenge to encourage diversity of technical expertise in membership of arbitral tribunals to ensure that arbitration decisions are the best informed possible.
Professor Jones will examine ways in which the need for expertise can be recognised and how diversity of expertise can be effectively deployed in both project dispute boards and in international construction arbitration.
Biography
Professor Doug Jones AO is an international commercial and investor-state arbitrator. He has been an International Judge of the Singapore International Commercial Court since 2019, and maintains offices in Sydney and Toronto and chambers in London.
He has been involved in more than 200 arbitrations across over 35 jurisdictions, spanning infrastructure, energy, commodities, intellectual property, commercial and joint venture, and investor-state disputes, conducted under most of the major institutional rules as well as ad hoc.
He is Co-Editor in Chief of the International Construction Law Review, a Professorial Fellow in the Law School at the University of Melbourne. He is a past President of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and of the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration, a past President of the International Academy of Construction Lawyers, and an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Construction Lawyers and the Canadian College of Construction Lawyers.
In 2025 Professor Jones received the SCL International Medal, awarded by vote of the member societies of the Society of Construction Law International. SCL Serbia invited him to deliver a keynote address at SCLI 2027, the next conference of those societies.