dispute avoidance in practice or how to stop a simple problem spiraling from a breeze to a whirlwind

Prologue:
Iam going to start this article with a true-life story.

Two Parties had entered into a construction contract with no provision for a Punch List Procedure¹.  The Employer’s lawyers attempted to make this good by writing a procedure for the Contractor’s review.  The Contractor’s lawyers added their own version side by side with the Employer’s.  The Employer did not entirely agree with the Contractor’s lawyer’s version and so produced another version set out side by side with the other two.  Perhaps unsurprisingly the Contractor did not agree with the Employer’s latest version and had its lawyer draft yet another.  This went on for two years with the document getting longer and more complex but with the Parties getting no closer to a solution with a dispute was seemingly   inevitable.  At one of its regular site visits, the Parties asked the Dispute Board for its help.  After taking some time to listen to the problem, the DAB did the following…