RICS plays a limited, but immensely important, role in construction adjudication. We nominate adjudicators. We do this in over 1,000 cases each year.
On the face of it, the task of nominating an adjudicator is relatively straightforward: RICS receives a request for an adjudicator from a referring party, and, within five days, we must tell them who has been nominated.
So, once a referring party has submitted their application to RICS, how do we then select who is going to be nominated?
Our starting position is that we must take reasonable care to nominate an adjudicator who is qualified. The RICS panel of adjudicators is comprised of chartered surveyors and other construction professionals who are highly experienced, and have successfully negotiated a robust programme of training, assessment and interviews. In each case, we also have regard to the nature of the dispute that is to be adjudicated and any specialist skills and knowledge that may be required of the adjudicator.
Secondly, we need to nominate an adjudicator who is free from conflicts of interest. In simple terms, this means we must take reasonable care to make sure the adjudicator has no financial or other interest in the outcome of the dispute. Put another way, the adjudicator must not be someone who is, or could be perceived as being, biased against or in favour of either party.
To help us ascertain whether any adjudicators on our panel should not be nominated because of a conflict of interest, we include a section in our application form that enables the referring party to inform us of “any adjudicators who would have a conflict of interest in this case."
Most people who are regularly involved in adjudication are familiar with the judgment in Eurocom Ltd -v- Siemens Plc [2014] EWHC 3710 (TCC). The lesson learned from this judgment is that it is important for the referring party, when completing the “conflicts” section of the RICS application form, to be honest and list only the names of individuals and firms who they genuinely believe to have a conflict. If the referring party gets a favourable decision from the adjudicator but is then found to have made a false statement about a conflict in the application to RICS, perhaps with the purpose of manipulating the nomination process to ensure they didn’t get a particular adjudicator, they may later find that the decision is not enforceable.
On 25 August 2025, the Technology and Construction Court (TCC) demonstrated that a statement only needs to be potentially false to prevent an adjudication decision from being enforced. In RNJM Limited -v- Purpose Social Homes Limited [2025] EWHC 2224, a referring party’s application to enforce an adjudication decision by summary judgment failed. The court decided that there was a prima facie case that the applicant had deliberately or recklessly made a false statement on the RICS application form to seek an advantage.
The court found that evidence provided by RNJM was wholly inadequate to establish a sound reason for objecting to an adjudicator on the RICS panel. The referring party simply made a bare assertion that an adjudicator on the panel was conflicted but did not provide a satisfactory explanation as to why.
The key lesson for parties who apply to RICS, and other adjudicator nominating bodies, is that they must not only be genuine when objecting to persons who they consider to be conflicted, they must also justify their objections.
The TCC has effectively reinforced the message to parties who apply to RICS that care must be taken when seeking nomination of an adjudicator. Adjudicators are often tasked with making decisions on issues that can be complex and involve a great deal of money. The credibility of adjudication as an impartial process requires there to be no question that one party is able to manipulate who is, or is not, nominated as adjudicator.
I suspect most parties will support this.
Martin Burns
Head of ADR Research and Development, RICS
15 September 2025