Working from his home in 1976 to start what became global claims consultant and project management giant Hill International Inc., Irvin E. Richter boosted revenue by offering seminars on construction disputes. But one seminar in the early 1980s led to the creation of a concept that became central to Hill’s approach to construction dispute resolution and a staple of industry contract language.
After Richter’s presentation, he was approached by a contractor who said he had lost an arbitration decision because the owner of the Houston shopping mall he was building didn’t believe that a roof leak was caused by a design flaw but by construction error. Richter helped the contractor appeal that decision, and soon heard from the owner. Both parties wanted to hire him to resolve the claim. If the two sides paid him equally, he said he’d settle the dispute as an impartial party, “and thus was born the concept of the ‘project neutral,’” Hill’s chairman emeritus recalled in his Nov. 1 acceptance speech for ENR MidAtlantic’s 2016 Legacy Award.