The Directors

 
JAMES FRANKS is a director of Disputes Resolved, a partnership which John Mulcare and he established in 1993 to provide mediation, adjudication and conciliation services.  He is a CEDR Accredited Mediator who has successfully mediated some 100-150 cases and is responsible for case administration for Disputes Resolved.   His mediation experience includes construction and commercial contract, neighbour/boundary and landlord and tenant disputes both privately and in the Central London County Court.  Some forty years' experience in the construction industry have convinced him of the need for methods for the resolution of disputes which are less confrontational than litigation and arbitration.

Summary of Experience

James Franks's professional experience includes management of construction and development companies, consultancy as a chartered surveyor and teaching construction management and economics, with particular reference to the management of contract disputes.  His experience of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) commenced in 1965 when he was appointed "trouble shooter" by a national construction firm, by which he was employed as managing surveyor, with a brief to reduce the staff time involved in, and high cost of, disputes and to minimise the risk of jeopardising future business relationships with clients, consultants and sub-contractors.  Between 1969 and 1993 he acted for a number of firms as consultant, undertaking a similar negotiator/mediator role.

He is author of four books, one in its third edition, and numerous articles, occasional papers etc., mainly on management and contractual matters.  His Building Contract Administration and Practice (Batsford 1991, reprinted 1994) was probably the first such book to introduce ADR in a work intended for "practitioners in building, architecture, surveying and related fields" and used as a course text.

For more than twenty years James was a principal lecturer at what is now London South Bank University, where he established, and for several years was director of, the MSc Construction Management Course.  This was probably the first "masters" course in Britain to include in the syllabus a unit concerned with mediation and other alternative methods of dispute resolution.  He has been a visiting lecturer at Birkbeck College, London University, Hong Kong and Singapore Polytechnics and a Visiting Fellow at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Victoria, Australia.  He has organised and taught on many "continuing professional development" courses at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and for the Chartered Institute of Building.  His experience in both construction and consulting sectors enables him, when acting as "third party", to bring a balanced view to dispute resolution.

James is a Master of Philosophy, a retired Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, of the Chartered Institute of Building and of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.  He is a Past-President of the Institute of Quantity Surveyors.  For many years he was a conciliator under the Chartered Building Company Scheme and on the list of adjudicators named for appointment under the JCT conditions of contract.  He no longer acts as mediator but is active as convenor and consultant to Disputes Resolved.