Where is your project right now?
Every Project Neutral® engagement applies the same discipline — senior, independent, privileged evaluation under a defined Methodology. What varies is the moment it arrives.
Engagements, by the moment they start
Before disputes
A standing Project Neutral® engaged from inception: risk discovery, continuous privileged engagement, and informal resolution as the first line of defense. Proactive engagement addresses issues when resolution costs least.
A dispute in motion
The 21-day Early Neutral Evaluation: a written, mediation-privileged assessment of the merits with practical recommendations and draft change-order language.
The 21-day ENE →After an evaluation
Ongoing dispute mitigation: the same Neutral who already knows the project, under the same privilege framework, on a cadence sized to the work still ahead.
A specific issue — or a troubled project
Targeted engagements: one hard technical dispute with independent specialists integrated under our framework, or comprehensive recovery for a delayed, disrupted, or distressed project.
The warning signs worth acting on
Disputes announce themselves. When two or three of these appear together, the economics favor engaging a neutral now.
- Change orders accumulating faster than they are resolved
- Schedule slippage with contested responsibility
- Payment applications reduced, disputed, or delayed
- Correspondence turning formal and positional
- Key relationships hardening at the project level
- Notice provisions being invoked to preserve claims
- Novel delivery methods or first-of-a-kind interfaces
- Multiple primes or major vendors pointing at one another
- Agency or oversight requirements becoming points of dispute
- A major risk event: differing site conditions, disaster, default risk
The facts of a dispute rarely change between the day it appears and the day it settles. What changes is the cost of getting there.
The situations we evaluate most
Owner–contractor
The core relationship of every project. Change management, schedule impact, and payment disputes — resolved before impacts cascade through the job.
Joint-venture governance
Partner contribution, decision-making, and risk-reward disputes inside the JV. Standard dispute clauses rarely address internal governance; an independent evaluation can.
Multi-prime coordination
Coordination disputes among primes with no contract between them. Privity is missing; the schedule interference is real. We evaluate the interfaces as the project actually built them.
Agency oversight
When regulatory or oversight requirements become the dispute — approvals, compliance direction, jurisdictional friction — resolution has to satisfy the regulator and the schedule at once.
Supply chain
Supplier and fabricator failures that disrupt the work from outside the direct contractual chain — responsibility allocated on the record, not on leverage.
Built for complex projects
Major infrastructure
Transportation, water, energy, and public facilities — multi-prime interfaces, agency funding partners, and self-performance at scale.
Our infrastructure experience →Complex systems
Healthcare, data centers, manufacturing, research facilities — specification compliance, commissioning, and vendor-responsibility disputes across integrated systems.
Multi-stakeholder projects
Projects where community, regulatory, and institutional interests shape delivery as much as the contract does — and bilateral thinking misses the real interrelationships.
Public-private partnerships
Concession-agreement analysis and public/private risk allocation across the lifecycle. We literally wrote a book on it.
Our publications →Selected Engagements
Dams & water
Oroville Dam
Safety-requirements dispute on a ~$1.1B emergency reconstruction — resolved without a formal claims process.
Read more →
Water program
Pure Water San Diego
Standing dispute-board roles across a multi-segment pipeline program.
Read more →
P3 / Highway
Presidio Parkway
Multi-agency alignment on California’s first transportation P3.
Read more →