We Lost 13 Months Fighting the Wrong Clause”: What Infra Contracts Often Miss About Dispute Escalation

A mid-tier construction company considered legal representation after an extended dispute with a subcontractor. They’d already spent 13 months navigating conflicting notices, internal escalation emails, and a failed mediation - only to realise their contract’s escalation clause didn’t align with the Arbitration Act’s enforceability standards.

The clause had been copy-pasted from a previous vendor agreement: one that didn’t account for the multi-layered site approval processes and phased payment schedules involved here.

Here’s what we uncovered:

1. The contract required a two-stage negotiation before invoking arbitration. But neither party had defined what “negotiation” entailed.

2. Payment milestones were linked to project deliverables. But there was no dispute resolution trigger aligned to delayed government approvals.

3. The arbitration clause named a forum. But the seat and venue were in different states, causing major jurisdictional confusion.

Outcome: We rewrote the clause, not just for this dispute, but for all future contracts. It was drafted now to reflect real project conditions, public authority dependencies, and phased work realities. The company has since avoided 3 similar escalations and is now building a more enforceable vendor stack.

Infra disputes aren’t about which side breached. They’re about whether your contracts reflect your site realities.