Sean Garbutt

Sean is an experienced construction litigator and a Principal Associate in Gowling WLG's contentious construction team. He has acted for, more or less, the full range of parties involved with construction related disputes, including national house builders, public sector employers, developers and their funders, main contractors, subcontractors, designers and consultants, insurers, end user employers and insolvency practitioners.

Sean has a particular expertise and experience in building safety disputes, including acting for the successful applicant in the landmark case of Triathlon Homes LLP -v- SVDP & Get Living PLC; which was the first contested Remediation Contribution Order under the Building Safety Act and of national importance. Aside from his experience of actions under the Building Safety Act, Sean has also acted on a number of disputes concerning fire safety matters, acting for both claimants and defendants, and has settled a number of these matters for multi-million pound sums.

In addition to his building safety practice, Sean has considerable experience in 'traditional' construction disputes concerning delays, payment disputes, defects and insolvency. In particular, Sean takes a keen interest in disputes with technical or engineering elements and has experience in matters such as concrete floor slab defects, geotechnical engineering/modelling disputes, paving failures, rail and infrastructure projects, and waste to energy engineering disputes. This breadth of experience has been gained in various dispute resolution mechanisms (litigation, arbitration, adjudication and mediation) and across all of the major forms of contract (JCT, NEC, FIDIC, IChemE, ICE and RIBA) as well as ad-hoc and bespoke contractual forms.