Emmolina May

Early this week, I ran a bilingual workshop called Before You Sign: Contract Risks That Become Payment Disputes. We spent an hour on scope, variations, notices, set-off, retentions and the special conditions that quietly move risk from one party to another. At the beginning of the session, I shared a fun fact about me: "although I'm a dispute specialist, I don't like disputes. I don't like conflict at all." and it surprised many of the audience, and here's my reasons. Every new dispute query...

I want to start this week with two questions I've been asking almost everyone I talk to lately, clients, contractors, homeowners renovating their own place. Question 1: Have you actually read your insurance policy, the whole thing, conditions and exclusions included? Question 2: Do you know what's actually changed, or is about to change, in building and construction regulation over the next two years? Almost nobody says yes to both. Most people say no to both. And I don't think that's a...

By the end of 2025, New Zealand had 551 fewer registered building and construction companies than it did the year before. Not 551 that quietly wound down after a slow trading year. A large share of those exits came through liquidation, on the back of two of the hardest years the sector has had in a while. That's the stat I came across this week that I haven't been able to stop thinking about, for a different reason than you might expect. This week's EM Fridays isn't really going to talk about...