China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC) has successfully completed the renewal of the Panel of Experts for Construction Disputes Review (Review Experts) and officially announced the New Panel of Experts for Construction Disputes Review on June 1, 2023.

The diversification of dispute resolution services has become one of the major trends in the development of dispute resolution in the world. Domestically, the high-quality development of the economy also requires the diversification of dispute resolution services. The Central Committee of the Party has made a critical decision to build a diversified dispute resolution mechanism. President Xing Jinping explicitly noted that “non-litigation dispute resolution mechanism should be put at the first place”. In response to the international trends, the call of the country, the demands of economic development, and the needs of enterprises to resolve dispute, CIETAC keeps being innovative. It not only provides independent, impartial, and globally renowned arbitration services, but also, benefiting from its rich experience in dispute resolution and a team of experts, provides domestic and foreign parties with diverse dispute resolution services such as mediation and construction disputes review.

Construction disputes generally have long project cycle, involve large disputed amount, numbers of project participants, complicated legal relationship and require specific professional background. Construction dispute review is a dispute resolution mechanism specially designed for engineering construction disputes. Construction dispute review has been proved to be an effective way for early prevention and timely resolution of construction disputes and has received wide attention in the field of engineering construction in recent years.

Early in 2010, CIETAC has released the Construction Dispute Review Rules to provide domestic and foreign parties with professional and efficient review services for construction disputes. Subsequently, the first Panel of Experts for Construction Disputes Review was announced for parties’ reference when appointing the members for the reviewing group.

The professionalism of the Review Experts guarantees the quality and efficiency of the review service. Therefore, CIETAC attached great significance to the work of renewal of the Panel.

CIETAC announced the renewal and was open to application for mediators to the public on April 6 2023. There was a considerable number of domestic and international applications. After strict selection, CIETAC decided to award the certificates of Review Experts to 191 domestic and foreign experts, 105 of them are renewed while 86 of them are newly awarded. There are 165 Mainland China experts, from 21 provinces/autonomous regions/municipalities, with 6 new provinces/autonomous regions, 26 experts from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and 12 foreign countries, including Australia, Germany, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Ireland, South Africa, Nepal, France, the United States and Malaysia, with 9 new countries. In particular, there are a number of Review Experts from countries alongside the “Belt and Road” to provide better service to the construction of the “Belt and Road”.

The Review Experts work in Chinese, English, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, Czech, Afrikaans, Hindi, Nepali, as well as Cantonese, Hakka, Minnan and other dialects. The expertise of the Review Experts covers construction project financing, bidding, contract management, construction management, completion and settlement, project claims and other dispute prone business. They are able to meet the demands of the parties from different countries, different regions and to resolve different types of engineering construction disputes.

Through the renewal CIETAC has further elevated the diversity, professionalism and internationalization of the Review Experts, optimized the review service, and plays an essential role in the prevention, reduction and timely resolution of construction disputes.

The new Penal of Experts for Construction Disputes Review has been officially announced at the portal of CIETAC (www.cietac.org). Parties can log on to inquire more detailed information of the Review Experts in the “ADR-Service”-“Construction Project Disputes Review”-“Experts for Construction Disputes Review Project”. CIETAC looks forward to providing professional and efficient construction project review service for domestic and foreign parties.