Diales Compendium Issue 3 - Flipbook - Page 5
ISSUE 3
COMPENDIUM
Birthdays are often a time to look back and reflect upon the
challenges and achievements that the years have provided.
As Diales Expert Witness Services now reaches its 10th
anniversary, which for any business is an important
milestone, I think it is time to take a moment and look back
at where we have been, and perhaps even more importantly,
where we are going.
I remember the process by which we came to launch
the Diales expert business very clearly. After a period of
consultation with clients, it became clear that we needed to
run our expert practice differently and present it in a clear
and concise way to the marketplace.
After many attempts, and an online survey, to try and select
the right name for this brand some intensive discussions led
to the suggestion of keeping it simple and calling it “Driver
International Arbitration Litigation and Expert Services”
and clearly this was not a snappy title. After some careful
checking to ensure that the initials now forming our new
word DIALES did not mean anything
unpleasant or rude in any of the
many jurisdictions in which we work,
we set about launching the brand
which took place in June 2012 at the
London Transport Museum. During
the preceding months we completed
the acquisition of Trett Consulting and
our team swelled to the point, where at
the launch party, we had 12 testifying
experts on the Diales website, all of
which attended the launch event. After
a very enjoyable evening hosted by Clive
Anderson, we headed off on the first
steps of the adventure of growing what
our expert practice would become.
There are few businesses in our sector where someone can
join as a quantity surveyor or architect and develop their
career all the way through to being a testifying expert, and
this is something that the Group is particularly proud of.
Over the last 10 years there have been a number of key
milestones along the way. I vividly remember the first project
where we provided a whole expert team of quantum delay,
architectural, mechanical, electrical, and structural/civil
experts. It worked particularly well, and all of the reports
were co-ordinated and the management of documents,
particularly drawings, was made much easier by having
a pre-made co-ordinated team. This is a service that is of
growing interest across our expert portfolio as clients and
law firms tackle the challenges of very large disputes with an
enormous number of documents to manage.
I mentioned earlier in this article that birthdays were also a
time to look to the future. I hope to be writing a similar piece
to this in both 5 and 10 years’ time, and have decided to make
myself a hostage to fortune by making some predictions for
those announcements. I see our total
number of testifying experts reaching
between 60 and 70 in that period
whilst maintaining the high standards
of quality that Diales has become a
byword for.
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I can see that we will engage more
marine oil and gas experts, as this
is a growing part of the business,
together with those with a close
interest in renewables, a process for
us which has already started with a
couple of key appointments in the
pipeline. I also expect us to have some
more technology experts, both in the
handling and the analysis of data and
also in the delivery of software and hardware in integrated IT
projects, where more and more disputes seem to be arising.
years
of Diales
One of the first things we were keen to achieve was to widen
our expert practice from purely quantum and delay to include
other technical specialisms. We found that there was a
clear demand for these services as it began with requests
for expert mechanical and electrical input from me! Stuart
Macdougald-Denton joined in 2014 with Stuart Holdsworth
joining in 2016. Together they rapidly grew a team of architects
and engineers that have now formed Diales Technical and
have undertaken work all over the globe for a very wide range
of clients on some extremely large projects.
It’s well known that behind every successful football team is
a manager that will tell you that in order to support your main
team, you need to have a really good quality training academy
in place, producing the stars of the future. When I look at the
48 testifying experts that are currently on our website, I am
delighted to see that many of them have completed the Diales
development programme, which is carefully structured by
Keith Strutt, using managed criteria in order to operate this
group very effectively.
Equally important is that we retain our values and stick
to our principles moving forward, ensuring that we do
everything we can to maintain and improve quality as well as
supporting our people who operate across the globe. From
Michelle McMillan in Calgary and the new team led by Simon
Braithwaite and Rob Otruba in New York, our many experts
based in the UK and Europe, right through to the Middle East
and Asia Pacific to Graham Topp in Australia.
Diales has become a truly global team of excellent people
offering the best service in expert witness support to our
clients that is possible, and while we will always strive to be
better and to add new people, we can certainly look back over
the last 10 years and be extremely proud of what we have
achieved.
Mark Wheeler
Head of Diales - Quantum and Technical Expert
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