Be ready to go Seven days after an adjudication notice has been issued, the referring party must serve a referral notice on the respondent. This referral notice gives details of the referring party's case. Supporting documentation must also be served with this notice. Of course, there are no rules as to how long a referring party can spend preparing for the adjudication. This is, after all, one of the first pieces of paper the adjudicator will see, so it is vital to draft a robust referral notice, leaving the adjudicator in no doubt as to why your claim is undefeatable.
Many clients have in-house experts.
A good quantity surveyor's or engineer's input at an early stage will save time and, probably, money at a later stage. The referral notice should be approved by the person instructing the solicitor , the QS's, and other personnel on the ground who have had day to day dealings with the case. In dispute was over 150,000 - sums due for electrical sub contracting work. The excellent work done by Philips' in-house quantity surveying team meant that the referral notice could state boldly that the main contractor had failed to serve a valid notice of retention to withhold payment. This failure meant that the contractor was debarred from withholding payments due under an interim application.