DAB, DAAB, mediation, arbitration — contractor-side commercial and technical support.

When a dispute cannot be resolved through direct commercial negotiation or Employer's Representative determination, the contract's escalation pathway typically directs the parties to a DAB, DAAB, mediation, arbitration or — less commonly — litigation. Each of these mechanisms has its own procedural requirements, evidential standards and strategic considerations.

Ashforte does not act as legal counsel and does not appoint itself as independent expert on its own clients' disputes. Our role in dispute escalation is commercial and technical support to the contractor's legal team: assembling the evidence base, drafting position papers, quantifying claim and defence positions, supporting expert witnesses, preparing hearing bundles, and coordinating the contractor's internal team through the process.

This role is where the record discipline built up through Ashforte's earlier work — contract management, notice discipline, claim preparation — pays off most directly. The evidence base is already structured. The claim positions are already substantiated. The dispute doesn't require reconstruction from scratch under time pressure.

Dispute escalation work is usually delivered as project-embedded senior support, working alongside the contractor's legal team through the duration of proceedings. Fixed-fee scoping is possible for defined-scope submissions (single Statement of Case, single expert witness support engagement), but full dispute engagements typically require flexible scoping given procedural unpredictability.