Please could you outline your area of expertise and what attracted you to it?

My area of expertise is non-contentious construction. We have quite a large Construction team here at Devonshires and the people within it either sit on the litigation side or the non-litigation side, so l entirely sit on the non-contentious side of the team. We do a lot of different things, all things development really. We're instructed by social and affordable housing providers to assist them with their developments and in recent years, that has also included a lot of fire safety and cladding remediation instructions, which has all been very interesting and at the forefront of the industry. We also have private developer clients and they build both residential and commercial properties, so we also have expertise in commercial property including; student accommodation, hotels and leisure, shopping centres, that kind of thing.

In terms of the actual work I do, it pretty much runs the lifespan of a development project, so sitting down with a client at the outset, discussing potential procurement routes and how best to structure a development or a deal. Engaging with lenders, a lot of our clients support their projects with debt finance, so looking over a finance agreement and making sure the development obligations are properly reflected in that loan agreement, as well as passing them down into all the construction contracts, then drafting and negotiating all of the construction contracts themselves. So, building contracts, appointments, we'll assist our clients with performance security. We will make sure that third party stakeholders who might have an interest in the development or in the site are all properly accounted for. We are well versed in assisting clients throughout the build phase, if there's any issues that crop up or if they need some assistance assessing extension of time, requests, loss and expense claims. Then eventually, if they choose that they want to dispose of the asset, we will also work on sales and purchases.

In terms of what attracted me to construction, I think it's the varied nature of the work. So you're not only dealing with bankers and lawyers every day, whilst you do speak to lawyers on a day to day basis, you're also speaking to architects, engineers, contractors, and their viewpoints and the conversations that you have with these different parties are all quite different and that's something that I really enjoy.