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GENERAL OVERVIEW

Blasdel A. Reardon, a civil engineer and former contractor, was involved in the engineering and management of industrial and commercial construction for forty years. Building upon this experience, in 2001 he became one of the founding partners of BostonSolv LLP, where he specializes in construction mediation, facilitation, and Dispute Review Board assignments.

Construction and Dispute Resolution Experience

In my third career, my passion is to keep constructors (owners, developers, designers, contractors, and other stakeholders) out of court. I previously spent twenty-one years developing computer systems for newly constructed steel mill facilities and nineteen more as a commercial and industrial subcontractor. During that time, I was involved in—and contributed to—many intractable conflicts, some of which blossomed into full-blown disputes.

This work allowed me to achieve a civil engineer’s dream: creating public and private spaces for life’s necessities. I traveled extensively to steel plants and then undertook a variety of construction projects, including high-rise buildings, power plants, hospitals, apartment/condo complexes, pharmaceutical facilities, food storage facilities, academic buildings, convention centers, and water and sewage treatment facilities.

As I fulfilled various engineering and management positions, I took a handson approach that combined my engineering and business school training. The most memorable projects were those where the new steel facility or building or infrastructure project was created with a team attitude and approach. Surely there were misunderstandings and conflicts, but when these were approached constructively rather than obstinately, we all were prouder of the result. Some of these more memorable projects were:

Each of these undertakings presented extreme constraints, such as safety, schedules, business interruption, financial budgets, technical construction means and methods, labor relations, access, traffic control, neighbor relations, historic consideration, security, and aesthetics. But each project was a success for those involved. From strictly a construction specialty point of view, my contributions ranged from information system design and structural steel design, to managing and executing sub-trades such as insulation, fire containment, curtain wall construction, dry-wall, low temperature containment, and carpentry.

With this experience in seeing how some projects met expectations, and how others fell short, I entered the field of construction dispute avoidance and resolution in 2000. First came formal education, followed by six years of court-assigned mediation and conciliation cases to achieve recognition in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Along the way, in collaboration with three partners, I launched a firm, BostonSolv LLP, to provide training, partnering, dispute review board, facilitation and mediation services to the real estate and construction industry.

In the past six years, I have been instrumental in the resolution of matters ranging from $50,000 to nearly $20 million in such specialties as miscellaneous metals, plumbing, millwork, carpentry, code compliance, worker’s compensation, masonry, and transmission lines. Meanwhile, in contrast to dispute resolution through self determination, the Massachusetts Bar Association appointed me a non-lawyer arbitrator for its fee resolution panel in 2002, another role from which I have benefited greatly.

The resume that follows provides a chronology of my professional achievements and related experiences and awards.