Do Contractors Secretly Love Disputes?
Everyone in construction pays lip service to “dispute avoidance” including me. We see it plastered across conference slides, embedded into new forms of contract, and touted as the key to collaboration. But let’s be honest: most contractors don’t actually use dispute avoidance techniques. They sit on problems, watch delays and overruns pile up, then dust off the contract and prepare for battle.
Why? Because for many contractors, disputes aren’t an unfortunate by-product of projects, they’re part of the business model. And consultants are not exactly rushing to stop it either.
Dispute Avoidance Exposes Too Much Truth
True avoidance requires openness by admitting mistakes, revealing risk, and putting problems on the table early. Contractors fear that transparency will only be weaponised against them. Better to stay silent, stockpile evidence, and let the issue mature into a claim.
The Culture Rewards Fighting, Not Solving
In construction, the “hard-nosed” contract manager is respected more than the collaborative problem-solver. Winning a claim is seen as a professional triumph. Avoiding one is often dismissed as being “soft”. Contractors don’t avoid disputes because the industry celebrates those who fight them.
Who Pays Matters
Here’s the dirty little secret: dispute avoidance costs money upfront. Consultants, facilitators, mediators, or standing boards are expenses that have to be carried by the project itself. But once a dispute escalates into arbitration or litigation, the costs usually shift to head office. That means project teams avoid spending their own budget on prevention and kick the can upstairs, where the legal machine takes over. It is easier for the project to pass the problem along than to own the cost of avoiding it.
Consultants Profit from Conflict Too
Let’s be brutally honest: consultants also make money from disputes including myself. Preparing claims, drafting expert reports, and giving evidence in arbitration pays far more than sitting in a project meeting trying to prevent one.
Some consultants build entire practices around disputes. So, while they may promote dispute avoidance on stage at conferences, in practice many benefits from letting problems escalate. The longer the fight, the bigger the fees.
Avoidance Feels Riskier Than War
Avoidance techniques like early warnings and standing dispute boards only work if both sides act in good faith. Contractors do not trust that owners will. By avoiding a fight, they fear losing leverage. By waiting for the dispute, they believe they gain it.
The Ugly Truth
The industry talks about dispute avoidance as if it is common sense. But the reality is, disputes are baked into the DNA of construction. Until the culture changes and both contractors and consultants stop relying on conflict as a revenue strategy, dispute avoidance will remain nothing more than a buzzword.
So What’s the Solution?
If contractors and consultants secretly benefit from disputes, how do we break the cycle? The answer isn’t another clause in the contract or another seminar on “collaboration”.
The solution lies in realigning incentives.
- Make dispute avoidance commercially attractive. If project teams had budgets that rewarded them for closing out risks early, rather than punting them to head office, avoidance would become a financial win rather than a cost.
- Shift accountability. Owners can demand active dispute avoidance mechanisms and tie performance incentives to their use. If avoidance is not optional, the culture will start to move.
- Reward collaboration, not conflict. Contractors and consultants rise in status today by winning claims. That needs to flip. Organisations should promote and reward the professionals who prevent disputes, not just those who fight them.
- Transparency on costs. The industry needs to admit that disputes are not “free”. They drain projects, delay completion, and destroy reputations. Only when boards and clients demand the true cost of disputes on their balance sheets will change follow.
The blunt truth? Until money and career progression depend on avoiding disputes, nothing will change. People follow incentives, not ideals.
Maybe it is time we stop asking why contractors don’t use dispute avoidance. The better question is: who actually benefits from keeping disputes alive?