ZHAO YANG GEOTECHNIC PTE LTD v CHINA COMMUNICATIONS CONSTRUCTION COMPANY LTD (SINGAPORE BRANCH)

Facts

China Communications Construction Company Ltd (Singapore Branch) engaged Zhao Yang Geotechnic Pte Ltd as a subcontractor for works at Changi Airport. Zhao Yang served a payment claim for $7,210,109.37; the main contractor responded with nil. In adjudication SOP/AA 135 of 2025, the adjudicator awarded Zhao Yang $3,541,361.21.

The main contractor applied for an adjudication review. Zhao Yang did not file its own review application but argued in reply that the review panel could look at the whole determination, including points on which Zhao Yang was dissatisfied. The three-member panel held that since the 2018 amendments to the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act let claimants also seek review, each party must now file its own application. It reviewed only the main contractor's issues and reduced the adjudicated amount to nil. Zhao Yang applied to the High Court (Originating Application No 1410 of 2025) to set aside the review determination.

Issues

1. Whether a misdirection on a point of law is a ground for setting aside an adjudication review determination.
2. Whether, after the 2018 amendments, review adjudicators may review the entire adjudication determination or only the issues raised by the review applicant.
3. Whether the review determination should be set aside entirely or remitted to the review adjudicators.

Holding

The High Court held that the review panel was entitled, and bound, to review the entire adjudication determination, so it had misdirected itself. But it declined to set the review determination aside and instead remitted it to the same review adjudicators to review the issues identified by Zhao Yang. Costs were to be dealt with by short written submissions.

Reasoning

On the first issue, the statutory grounds for setting aside are not exhaustive. Reconciling earlier decisions through Comfort Management Pte Ltd v OGSP Engineering Pte Ltd [2018] 1 SLR 979, the court held that a legal misdirection which breaches a mandatory provision and so goes to the reviewer's jurisdiction can found a setting aside, while one touching only the merits cannot. The scope of review concerns jurisdiction.

On the second issue, the court applied the purposive approach in Tan Cheng Bock v Attorney-General [2017] 2 SLR 850. The operative words in s 18(2), the review of the determination, were unchanged and plainly referred to the whole determination, as Ang Cheng Guan Construction Pte Ltd v Corporate Residence Pte Ltd [2017] 3 SLR 988 had held. The provisions on what reviewers may consider also contained no limiting words. Concerns about free-riding, ambush and the regulation fixing the number of reviewers did not hold: parties still have reason to file, issues will usually have been argued already, and the number of reviewers is fixed once on receipt of the application. Since the text was clear, extraneous material could only confirm it, and in any event the law reform proposals and the Minister's speech did not show an intention that each party must apply separately. Giving both sides a right to apply does not mean each must do so. The analogy with cross-appeals in court was rejected.

On remedy, the court adopted the arbitration principles in Vietnam Oil and Gas Group v Joint Stock Company (Power Machines – ZTL, LMZ, Electrosila Energomachexport) [2025] 2 SLR 273. The panel had reasoned carefully to a defensible, if wrong, view shared by other panels, so no fair-minded observer would doubt its fairness. Zhao Yang's issues were stand-alone, and remitting would save time and cost compared with a fresh panel.

From the judgment