WongPartnership LLP

Infrastructure, Construction & Engineering; Malaysia

Kua Lay Theng is a Partner in the Infrastructure, Construction & Engineering Practice.

Her area of practice focuses on advising parties in the construction industry for the entire life cycle of projects. This encompasses front-end/transactional work such as drafting, reviewing, negotiating and advising on standard forms of building contracts and other related agreements in the building industry; project advisory work during the execution of the project and contentious work arising from the project in various forms of dispute resolution processes such as arbitration (both international and domestic), statutory adjudication, mediation and litigation.

Prior to joining WongPartnership, Lay Theng was a Partner at a leading law firm in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where she handled construction-related disputes. She has considerable construction industry sector experience within the region especially in South East Asia.

She was the former Deputy Registrar of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) where she supervised the administration of arbitration cases filed at the SIAC including the scrutiny of arbitral awards and the appointment of arbitrators.

Work Highlights

Matters of significance in which Lay Theng has been involved in include advising / acting for the following:

A Government Agency in disputes with its main contractor in a project involving the remediation of a former gasworks site to decontaminate and render it suitable for redevelopment, the first of its kind in Singapore. A developer on various aspects of its project (both transactional and contentious) to reclaim and develop four islands in the Maldives into resorts to be operated by various luxury hotel chains and a staff campus worth US$500 million. Asplenium Land Pte. Ltd., the employer of a condominium project in disputes with its terminated main contractor in arbitration and various court proceedings including a landmark Court of Appeal decision which upheld the enforceability of a clause restricting the employer's ground to restrain a call on a performance bond to fraud only. A subcontractor in a dispute with a joint venture partner and obtained a court order to restrain statutory adjudication proceedings commenced by the JV partner for a claim in excess of S$355 million, the largest claim ever lodged in statutory adjudication in Singapore. A leading EPC contractor in its construction of a US$1.5 billion power plant and port facility in Bangladesh. A main contractor in its joint venture with other contractors in the construction of Tuas Terminal Finger Pier 3 valued over S$1.4 billion.

Publications & Legal Updates

Chambers Global Practice Guides - Public Procurement and Government Contracts 2020

English, Malay, Bahasa Indonesia.

Lay Theng is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the Singapore Institute of Arbitrators. She also sits as an arbitrator and is on the SIAC Reserve Panel of Arbitrators and the Asian International Arbitration Centre (AIAC)'s Panel of Arbitrators.

She is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Building and Construction Authority Academy.

Admitted, Singapore Bar; English Bar; Malaysian Bar; University of Leicester, UK (LL.B., Second Class (Upper Division) Honours); National University of Singapore (LL.M.); Middle Temple (Barrister-at-Law).