Senior figures from Parliament’s Restoration and Renewal Programme, the Environment Agency, HS2 delivery, construction law, contracting and the specialist supply chain will come together in London for a major industry conference focused on preventing disputes before they damage projects. The Conflict Avoidance Conference 2026 will bring an exceptionally experienced group of construction clients, commercial leaders, contractors, lawyers and collaboration specialists to Plaisterers’ Hall in the City of London on Wednesday 16 September.
Organised by the Conflict Avoidance Coalition and delivered under the theme “Promoting Co-operation in Construction,” the conference will examine how earlier intervention, clearer contracts, stronger project relationships and better commercial behaviour can prevent disagreements from escalating into expensive formal disputes.
The event runs from 9.00am until 5.00pm at Plaisterers’ Hall, One London Wall, London EC2Y 5JU. Early-bird tickets are available for £99 plus VAT until 14 August 2026, after which the ticket price increases to £150 plus VAT. Tickets can be booked through the RICS website.
A Conference Built Around the People Shaping Construction Delivery
Construction events frequently promise high-level discussion. This conference has assembled speakers who are directly responsible for procurement, contractual strategy, commercial governance and project delivery across some of the UK’s most important organisations and infrastructure programmes.
The programme moves beyond general statements about collaboration. Delegates will hear from professionals who have negotiated complex contracts, established procurement strategies, delivered major infrastructure, advised senior project teams and managed the commercial realities that determine whether cooperation works in practice.
Sue Barrett: Procurement Leadership at the Heart of Parliament’s Restoration
Sue Barrett, Head of Contracts and Procurement at the Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Delivery Authority, brings more than 25 years of construction-industry experience to the conference. Her career includes senior responsibility for commercial, procurement and contracting strategies across projects valued individually at more than £4 billion and portfolios valued at approximately £9 billion.
Before joining the Delivery Authority, Barrett worked in senior roles involving major transport and urban infrastructure. Her experience includes Transport for London’s Northern Line Extension to Battersea, the Bank Station Capacity Enhancement programme and major works at Victoria and Tottenham Court Road stations. Few speakers are better positioned to explain what sophisticated public-sector clients require from contractors, consultants and commercial teams. Her contribution will give delegates a valuable view of how conflict avoidance can be incorporated into the procurement and governance of nationally significant programmes.
Veronica Flint Williams: Combining Engineering Judgement with Commercial Strategy
Veronica Flint Williams brings together the technical understanding of a qualified civil engineer and the commercial insight developed through more than four decades in infrastructure and construction. After spending more than 20 years in the private sector, particularly within the commercial and contracting divisions of the water industry, she joined the Environment Agency in 2010.
As part of the Environment Agency’s Commercial Centre of Excellence, Flint Williams helps shape commercial strategies, standards and best practices for working with construction delivery partners. Her role focuses on managing contractual and commercial risk while maintaining the balanced relationships needed to deliver sustainable and resilient infrastructure. A Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, she also has a strong commitment to mentoring the next generation. Her perspective will demonstrate how major clients can protect their commercial position without creating the adversarial conditions that so often undermine project performance.
Richard Bayfield: A Career Spanning Contractor, Consultant and Client
Richard Bayfield FICE FCIArb offers something particularly valuable: experience from almost every side of the construction table. Beginning his career as a student working at the Thames Barrier, Bayfield went on to occupy senior positions as a contractor, consultant and client. He is currently a Vice President of the Institution of Civil Engineers and is a former Chair and Honorary Member of the Society of Construction Law.
In his recent advisory work, he has helped client organisations establish contracts, governance systems, communication structures and project processes deliberately designed to create collaborative cultures and reduce the risk of failure. That breadth of experience gives Bayfield the authority to discuss not simply what collaboration should look like, but how clients can build it into the machinery of a live project.
Edward Moore: Building Collaboration Before Problems Begin
Edward Moore, Chief Executive of ResoLex, specialises in embedding collaboration within project teams and assessing whether team-development initiatives are producing meaningful results. Working directly with senior project leaders, Moore has developed considerable experience as a hands-on workshop facilitator. His work focuses on creating the foundations for strong and durable professional relationships before programme pressure, design changes and commercial disagreements begin testing them.
His conference session will examine conflict avoidance before a contract is even signed, including the creation of collaborative teams, the meaning of a genuinely cooperative project culture and the practical application of the Conflict Avoidance Toolkit. For project leaders who recognise that behavioural problems cannot always be solved through additional contract clauses, this session alone offers a compelling reason to attend.
Anthony Armitage: Challenging the Construction Industry’s Contractual Complexity
Anthony Armitage began his legal career at Allen & Overy and has practised law in the City of London throughout his career. He is now General Counsel at Thirdway, a major commercial interior design and fit-out contractor based in Clerkenwell. Armitage has developed a particular interest in intelligent contract design, simplification and ethical legal practice within construction. As Chair of the Coalition Contract Group, he leads lawyers and industry professionals working to promote contract standardisation as an important part of conflict avoidance.
His session will address one of construction’s most persistent commercial questions: whether standard-form contracts should be amended and, when they are, whether the amendments clarify responsibility or merely introduce new layers of risk and ambiguity. Contractors, consultants, quantity surveyors and legal advisers can expect a forthright examination of why contracts are amended, where the process goes wrong and whether the industry sometimes creates the disputes it later pays lawyers to resolve.
Jeremy Glover: International Authority on Construction Dispute Avoidance
Jeremy Glover, Partner at Fenwick Elliott LLP and Vice President of the Conflict Avoidance Coalition, brings formidable international construction-law and dispute-resolution credentials to the programme. He is an accredited adjudicator, a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators’ Adjudication Sub-Committee and a FIDIC Certified Adjudicator. He also sits on the FIDIC President’s List and serves as President of the Dispute Resolution Board Foundation’s Executive Board.
Glover is the co-author of Understanding the FIDIC Red and Yellow Book: A Clause-by-Clause Commentary and the lead editor of Building Contract Disputes: Practice and Precedents. Alongside his legal practice, he contributes to postgraduate construction-law and building-information-modelling education. His international session will consider lessons from infrastructure projects outside the UK, the role of project funders, dispute boards and examples from the Middle East. Delegates will hear from someone who does not merely study international dispute avoidance but actively helps shape its professional practice.
Len Bunton: The Campaigner Who Put Conflict Avoidance on the Industry Agenda
Len Bunton FRICS FCIArb Hon FRIAS, the first President of the Conflict Avoidance Coalition, has spent many years challenging practices that allow unnecessary disputes, payment problems and commercial conflict to become accepted features of construction. Now practising as a Conflict Avoidance Consultant, Bunton advises trade organisations and specialist contractors on procurement and dispute prevention. He has made a major contribution to the development of the Coalition and continues to act as one of its most energetic ambassadors.
His influence lies not only in identifying what is wrong, but in consistently pressing clients, contractors and advisers to adopt practical alternatives. At the conference, Bunton will explain why organisations should sign the Conflict Avoidance Pledge and how the commitment can influence real commercial behaviour rather than becoming another corporate statement with little effect on project delivery.
Iain McIlwee: A Powerful Voice for the Specialist Supply Chain
Iain McIlwee, Chief Executive of the Finishes and Interiors Sector, has built a career that connects materials, manufacturing, specialist contracting, competence, fire safety and construction policy. His journey began in a scaffolding yard in Hanwell in 1995. Since then, his roles have included Chief Executive of the British Woodworking Federation, Director of the Fire Door Inspection Scheme, Non-Executive Director of FENSA and Vice Chair of the Construction Products Association.
Today, he leads FIS, representing the UK’s £10 billion fit-out and finishing sector. He also contributes to the City of London Corporation’s Skills for a Sustainable Skyline Taskforce and is a director of SKA Rating. McIlwee has become one of the specialist construction sector’s most recognisable and direct voices. His presence ensures that discussions about cooperation, payment, contractual behaviour and accreditation remain grounded in the experience of businesses that actually employ labour, procure materials and deliver work on site.
Edward Schryver: Conflict Avoidance from the Contractor’s Commercial Front Line
Edward Schryver, Group Commercial Director at VVB Engineering, brings direct contractor and infrastructure-delivery experience to the conference. VVB operates across rail, highways, fire, power and energy. Schryver is also Contracts Performance Director for Anthro Solutions, the project-specific joint venture between VVB and Egis UK delivering mechanical and electrical works for the Old Oak Common station development on High Speed 2.
His previous experience includes roles with Balfour Beatty in its rail and major-projects businesses and with specialist fit-out contractor Astins. Schryver’s contribution will be particularly relevant to contractors and commercial teams seeking to understand whether the Conflict Avoidance Pledge can produce measurable benefits in live project environments. He represents the practical end of the debate, where collaborative intentions must survive procurement pressure, programme demands, technical interfaces and commercial accountability.
Emma Jones CBE: Bringing Payment and Small-Business Reality into the Room
Emma Jones CBE, founder of Enterprise Nation and the UK Small Business Commissioner, brings an essential small-business and payment perspective to the conference. Her statutory responsibilities include reviewing complaints from small companies concerning late payment and providing guidance on payment and procurement issues.
Jones founded Enterprise Nation in 2005 after building and selling her first business. The organisation developed into a major digital support platform reaching more than 800,000 businesses annually, while Jones became a prominent voice representing entrepreneurs and small companies to government and the media. Her participation connects the conference’s conflict-avoidance agenda with one of construction’s most persistent challenges: the effect that delayed decisions, disputed accounts and late payments have on smaller organisations throughout the supply chain.
Why Construction Professionals Should Attend
The programme will cover the current causes of construction disputes, client adoption of conflict-avoidance methods, pre-contract team development, amendments to standard forms, international dispute-board practice and the practical value of signing the Conflict Avoidance Pledge. It will also ask a more difficult question: how can construction move away from the entrenched behaviours that repeatedly turn manageable project issues into prolonged commercial disputes?
Delegates will not be presented with the unrealistic suggestion that construction can operate without disagreement. Design development, variations, payment assessments, access restrictions, delay, defects and changing project requirements will always create competing positions. The value of conflict avoidance is in recognising those positions earlier, bringing the correct decision-makers together and resolving issues while the project, commercial relationship and wider supply chain can still be protected.
For clients, contractors, project directors, commercial directors, quantity surveyors, engineers, consultants, contract managers, specialist subcontractors and construction lawyers, the Conflict Avoidance Conference offers access to an unusually concentrated level of experience. This is not simply an event for dispute-resolution specialists. It is for everyone responsible for preventing projects from reaching the point where formal dispute resolution becomes unavoidable.
Book Before the Early-Bird Deadline
The Conflict Avoidance Conference 2026 takes place on:
Wednesday 16 September 2026
9.00am–5.00pm
Plaisterers’ Hall
One London Wall, London EC2Y 5JU
Early-bird tickets cost £99 plus VAT until 14 August 2026. The price then increases to £150 plus VAT.
Non-RICS members can also book and will only need to complete the short RICS registration process. The early-bird reduction is applied at the end of the booking process.
BOOK YOUR PLACE AT THE CONFLICT AVOIDANCE CONFERENCE 2026
London Construction Magazine is a signatory member of the Conflict Avoidance Coalition and supports its objective of encouraging construction organisations to identify and address emerging disagreements before they develop into formal disputes and damaging supply-chain conflict.
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Expert Verification & Authorship: Mihai Chelmus
Founder, London Construction Magazine | Construction Testing & Investigation Specialist |
