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This article investigates the possibility, for the parties to a construction contract providing for a Dispute Board, to give Board's members the power to decide as arbitrators any disputes not already settled during the pre-arbitral proceedings. Indeed, DB proceedings - when failing their primary purpose of dispute avoidance - end up with decisions which are not in themselves enforceable. Therefore, the winning party has to start arbitral proceedings in order to have the dispute adjudicate again, while trying - in the meanwhile - to have the DB's decision provisionally enforced by means of an interim award.
The suggested DB-arb model, by contrast, would allow the parties to benefit from the panel's familiarity with the project and the matters at stake, so that the dispute - being already known by the decision maker - could be settled in a timely and cost-effective manner, with a plainly enforceable decision.
