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Preface to the first edition

Document Cited authorities 2 Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorJulian Bailey
Pages67-72
lxvii
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
5 Without wishing to cause embarrassment or oence to the Welsh people, I hope I may be forgiven for abbrevi-
ating “England and Wales” to “England” and “English and Welsh” law to “English” law. I have done this simply for
economy of words. For the same reason, I have also used masculine pronouns instead of both the masculine and the
feminine, conscious though I am of the limitations of such an outdated linguistic practice.
6 I use the word “practitioners” in a broad sense, to refer not only to legal practitioners but other professionals who
encounter construction law issues in their daily working lives.
It may be helpful to the reader if I oer the following explanation of the approach I have
taken in writing this book.
General approach
I have attempted to set out, in compendious terms, the law that relates to the perfor-
mance of construction and engineering work as it applies in England and Wales5 and
Australia. is book is intended primarily for use by practitioners6 of construction law
in those jurisdictions, so as to provide them with a general textbook that may be called
upon to obtain answers to day-to-day legal questions, with references to applicable cases,
statutes, regulations, relevant literature and website addresses. A perusal of the contents
table of this book will indicate that the breadth of subject matters covered is consid-
erable. It is not limited to consideration of construction contracts alone, and has been
written to cover the whole eld of construction law (which I have attempted to dene at
the beginning of Chapter 1).
Jurisdictions covered
Why, it may be asked, did I choose to write about the laws of both England and Aus-
tralia? To a certain extent, the rationale is a little arbitrary. I am Australian, and worked
as a construction lawyer in Sydney for a few years before emigrating to England. Since
early days I have kept a set of notes on construction law (cases, statutes, articles, etc),
gradually updating them with each new legal development. ese notes have been my
“tools of the trade”. My working notes have, primarily because of my Australian back-
ground and continuing interest in Australian law, and because of the needs of practising
law in England, evolved so that they cover both jurisdictions. Latterly I landed on the
idea that it may be worthwhile putting these notes into publishable form, and seeing
whether a publisher would be brave enough to unleash them on the world. Happily
enough, Informa agreed with alacrity to do just that.

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