Karen Best

Karen Best is a Chartered Civil Engineer with nearly 30 years of experience in the construction and engineering industries. She worked as a site agent and senior engineer for almost a decade before moving into construction consultancy, giving her a strong grounding for the delay expert and expert assistant roles that she has undertaken.

Karen has been appointed as delay expert on more than 15 occasions regarding building and power related project disputes. She has also assisted the named expert on 15 occasions on various projects across the Middle East, Europe and the Americas. Karen has been cross-examined in arbitration and has a wide range of expert witness training from various institutions including the Academy of Experts, Bond Solon, the Expert Witness Institute and Pearson Education.

Karen is experienced in construction management, project planning and critical path methods of retrospective delay analysis. She has worked on expert appointments related to delay and disruption claims regarding civil engineering and building contracts from power plants in Qatar and industrial facilities in Australia to numerous buildings and infrastructure projects across Europe, the UK and Africa.

Karen is widely experienced as a site engineer and has worked on a variety of civil engineering projects across the UK. These range from marine, bridges and heavy civils projects including work on the construction of the London Eye. As a site agent, Karen was responsible for various projects, planning and organising works on site, and liaising with clients and subcontractors.

Karen has a Masters in Construction Law and Arbitration and is a regular presenter at joint CIOB masterclasses. She presents on the subjects of delay analysis and developing the master programme, and has presented at the RICS autumn seminar series on the same topic. Karen is highly regarded by clients and colleagues alike; during last minute preparation for a potential testimony a client espoused that, “she was well prepared and supremely confident in assessing and digesting difficult subject matter” and that, “the intricate … analysis was evenly balanced with an overall assessment [that] fit perfectly with the legal strategy of the case”. Senior experts that she has assisted advise that Karen is, “an invaluable lead assistant” and that she excels at, “getting to grips with the detail”.