ENG HAN ENGINEERING Sdn Bhd

On the court record

An engineering company litigating the enforcement and setting-aside of construction adjudication decisions under CIPAA 2012 and arbitral awards under the Arbitration Act 2005.

Eng Han Engineering Sdn Bhd appears in the corpus in construction and arbitration litigation, its disputes clustering around the enforcement and setting-aside of adjudication decisions and arbitral awards. It appears as respondent, applicant, plaintiff and appellant across the High Court and Court of Appeal.

The construction-payment strand is grounded in the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012. In connected proceedings arising from a single adjudication decision, one application was brought under section 15(b), (c) and (d) of the Act to set the decision aside — with the adjudicator's core jurisdiction itself challenged — while the companion application sought to enforce the same decision under section 28. This pairing of a setting-aside application against an enforcement application is the characteristic shape of CIPAA litigation, in which the paying party resists and the unpaid party enforces the same adjudicated sum.

The arbitration strand engages the Arbitration Act 2005. In one matter the company obtained a stay of court proceedings pending arbitration under section 10, the application being allowed. In the Court of Appeal the company was involved in a challenge to an arbitral award, the court working through the statutory framework governing the extent of court intervention under section 8, the definition and form of an arbitration agreement under section 9, the determination of the rules of procedure under section 21, the form and contents of an award under section 33, the finality and binding nature of an award under section 36, and the grounds for setting aside under section 37(1) and (2). Together these matters place the company squarely within the machinery by which construction and commercial disputes are resolved outside, and then policed by, the courts. The recurring feature of the company's disputes is that the substantive contest over payment or performance is channelled into a fixed statutory framework — adjudication under CIPAA or arbitration under the Arbitration Act 2005 — after which the battleground shifts to the narrow grounds on which a court may refuse to enforce, or may set aside, the decision or award that the framework has produced.