Mike C. Stewart

Mike C. Stewart is a partner at ATAC LAW, a professional engineer, and counsel in construction disputes. He holds the P.Eng. designation in British Columbia and Ontario, and practised as a project and consulting engineer in the energy and renewable energy sectors before his call to the bar. He acts for owners, contractors and subcontractors, developers, consulting engineers, municipalities, First Nations and their housing and development entities, and insurers. Having occupied both roles, he examines a project on two levels, reading the drawings, the schedule, and the change order log as the engineers who produced them did, then considering what a court can be shown of that record.

Construction constitutes the substance of his practice. He advances and defends claims for payment, holdbacks, delay, extras, change orders, and quantum meruit, together with deficiency and warranty claims and the disagreements arising among owners, contractors, subcontractors, and consultants. He files, defends, and discharges builders liens under the Builders Lien Act, and attends to the lien bonds, sureties, and releases that accompany them. His work proceeds throughout in CCDC 2 and CCDC 5B and their supplementary conditions, and in the Master Municipal Construction Documents on civil and municipal projects, so that a claim is argued upon the contract the parties concluded rather than the one they recall.

He is trial counsel, and much of each year is given to the preparation and conduct of hearings. He appears before the Supreme Court of British Columbia, conducts examinations for discovery, undertakes direct and cross examination at trial, contests the admissibility of expert reports, and delivers closing argument, together with the chambers applications, trial management conferences, summary trials, and registrar hearings that attend it. He retains and instructs the geotechnical, structural, scheduling, and quantum experts upon whom a construction case ordinarily turns, and examines with equal care those served against his client. He appears as counsel in commercial arbitration and at mediation, and is a Qualified Arbitrator and Qualified Mediator with ADRBC.

Mike also drafts and reviews the instruments from which disputes arise, among them construction contracts and supplementary conditions, tender packages and instructions to tenderers, procurement policy, and bonding requirements, advising on the compliance of a bid before award. He defends professional engineers before Engineers and Geoscientists British Columbia against allegations of negligence, misconduct, and breach of the Code of Ethics, negotiating consent resolutions and terms of suspension. He has advised First Nations and their economic development entities on procurement, major project investment, and the acquisition of assets out of receivership. He will say early where a contract can be repaired rather than litigated, and where it cannot, he prepares the matter to be tried.