As Architects and Building Surveyors with decades of experience and sector specialisms in the building industry, we are best placed to act as an independent Expert to support clients and the wider consultant teams, as well as to assess and advise on disputes involving building defects. Few other professionals are as well placed to interrogate the intricate and complex process of creating a building.

Our team of Expert Witnesses along with their collective specialist knowledge can provide Defect Reports in sectors covering Healthcare, Construction Typologies, Cladding Remediation, Education, Heritage and Conservation and Sustainability.

We are in the unique position to provide insights and detailed understanding of the complexities surrounding building regulations, construction legislation and contract law.

Make sure that you instruct the right expert or you may cause yourself:

• Unnecessary expense
• Get the wrong advice that doesn’t help your case
• Employ someone who is inexperienced in the CPR 35 rules.

Cowan Architects combine the weight of building experience with a knowledge of legal process so that we can help with:

• Opening up new avenues of thought and changing the direction of a case;
• Provide the correct advice to counter the other expert.
• Providing a strong consistent argument backed up by experience and legislation which does not stray from the experts area of expertise.

The apportioning of blame can be a weighty process with numerous interested parties battling it out to prove that it was someone else’s fault.

For structural defects discovered years after completion, contractors and consultants carry a legal responsibility towards the owner to rectify the problem and the proof of liability required can be a lengthy process. Due to the number of different parties involved, often sharing responsibilities, it can be very difficult to prove negligence.

Assignment of contracts, changing building ownership and the transient nature of previously involved consultants all need clarity and transparency.

Depending upon the building’s use and age, differing legislation such as building regulations, planning and other current directives, could have applied to its design. The path of contractual responsibility, given the myriad of construction contracts and changing responsibilities that occur from planning through to construction and onto ownership, is often not clear.

As architects, we are usually, and uniquely, involved in all these processes which make us the obvious choice to act as Expert Witnesses.

Depending on what is being built, each element of the Building Regulations could be applied differently according to the building’s need. Extensive understanding and knowledge of these is an essential tool in the Building Defects Expert’s bag.