The 29th November 2007 saw members of the Society at the Singapore Mediation Centre attending what surely must have been one of the Society’s more unusual talks. This was on the use of advanced forensic animations in the resolution of complex disruption claims by Keith Pickavance.

The proposition was that computer animations could be used to simulate the as-built sequence of events and compared with the planned work sequence. This is particularly relevant to projects characterized by a very large number of activities. Mr Pickavance demonstrated this with a project on which this exercise had been carried out. The resultant animation, which appears as a sort of large series of snapshots of the project, the whole presented in fast forward mode, provides for immediate comprehension of a complex scenario.

Enlightening as such animations might be, cautions were sounded in terms of their value as evidence. The courts have been slow to accept such animations as evidence and feedback from the audience suggested that arbitrators might share this caution. There were those who said they had employed such techniques but only by way of introducing their arguments, not as primary evidence. Nevertheless, the possibilities presented were intriguing with obvious possibilities of practical applications.