This book makes a significant contribution towards enlightening us on the nature of the
misunderstandings. Those of us in the industry, and amongst its clients, who are neither
lawyers nor insurance professionals must welcome a treatise on construction insurance by a
practising engineer who not only works in the construction trinity as a structural designer of
high calibre but also has a long experience in, and a deep understanding of, the insurance world.
What he has done is to demonstrate how heavily we depend on the precision of language
when disputes require legal resolution, and at the same time he has demonstrated that
language is savagely imprecise when it is ultimately tested. This is familiar ground in the area
of contracts for the execution of construction works, where the relationship between the
parties has degenerated from ‘fundamentally trusting’ to ‘fundamentally adversarial’.
Somehow we did not realise that the same problems lay in wait for insurance contracts, and
their manifestation over the last two years has been a shock to the system.