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Construction Disputes and Associated Contractual Knowledge Discovery Using Unstructured Text-Heavy Data: Legal Cases in the United Kingdom

Author

Listed:
  • JeeHee Lee

    (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV 89154, USA)

  • Youngjib Ham

    (Department of Construction Science, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA)

  • June-Seong Yi

    (Department of Architectural and Urban Systems Engineering, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 03760, Korea)

Abstract

Construction disputes are one of the main challenges to successful construction projects. Most construction parties experience claims—and even worse, disputes—which are costly and time-consuming to resolve. Lessons learned from past failure cases can help reduce potential future risk factors that likely lead to disputes. In particular, case law, which has been accumulated from the past, is valuable information, providing useful insights to prepare for future disputes. However, few efforts have been made to discover legal knowledge using a large scale of case laws in the construction field. The aim of this paper is to enhance understanding of the multifaceted legal issues surrounding construction adjudication using large amounts of accumulated construction legal cases. This goal is achieved by exploring dispute-related contract terms and conditions that affect judicial decisions based on their verdicts. This study builds on text mining methods to examine what type of contract conditions are frequently referenced in the final decision of each dispute. Various text mining techniques are leveraged for knowledge discovery (i.e., analyzing frequent terms, discovering pairwise correlations, and identifying potential topics) in text-heavy data. The findings show that (1) similar patterns of disputes have occurred repeatedly in construction-related legal cases and (2) the discovered dispute topics indicate that mutually agreed upon contract terms and conditions are import in dispute resolution.

Suggested Citation

  • JeeHee Lee & Youngjib Ham & June-Seong Yi, 2021. "Construction Disputes and Associated Contractual Knowledge Discovery Using Unstructured Text-Heavy Data: Legal Cases in the United Kingdom," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-17, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:16:p:9403-:d:619133
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Peter Fenn & David Lowe & Christopher Speck, 1997. "Conflict and dispute in construction," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(6), pages 513-518.
    2. Wen, Qi & Qiang, Maoshan & Xia, Bingqing & An, Nan, 2019. "Discovering regulatory concerns on bridge management: An author-topic model based approach," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 161-170.
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