What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Black & Veatch is a global engineering and construction company focused on providing innovation in sustainable infrastructure and supporting Asia’s energy transition. In practice, the company designs and builds significant infrastructure projects, often managing hundreds of millions of dollars of risk through one scheme. We typically deal with anywhere between three to five of these effective contract negotiations at one time in the region.

The projects are typically large-scale and complex with aggressive delivery schedules and sometimes deploy first-of-a-kind technology. In addition, as our legal team operates across the region with various regional and global clients, we must also navigate multiple legal and cultural nuances throughout negotiations. Ultimately, we help manage risk and set up our engineering and construction teams to successfully deliver safe, profitable and on-time projects for our clients.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

I am leading the deployment of digital tools to automate legal workflows, including automated document generation, internal approvals, task allocation, and entity management. Documents we previously created individually are now standardised, automated and less prone to human error. Documents are even automatically translated from English to a local Asian language, which helps many of our internal clients in the region whose first language might not be English. This has been made possible by the functionality of existing tools being applied differently to better serve the group’s legal and risk management needs.

What are some of your tips for dealing with an in-house legal crisis?

We take an all-hands approach to dealing with crises, which requires people of various backgrounds to be ready and willing to help at a moment’s notice, even though all eyes will be on the in-house lawyer to take the lead. To muster that kind of support, in-house lawyers must build a strong, dependable, and trusted network of colleagues. Rome was not built in a day, as the saying goes, and in-house lawyers must invest time and effort in forging solid relationships with various stakeholders outside the legal bubble.

In-house lawyers need to be prepared for anything to hit our desks at any time, and we can only be ready if we are attuned to the tell-tale signs of a simmering crisis. I encourage in-house lawyers to check in from time to time with colleagues and stakeholders, if only to ask, ‘Is everything okay? This symbolic but important act can bring about two critical benefits. Firstly, it can bring complex issues to the fore so that they can be nipped in the bud early, and if they were to become fully-blown crises, we in-house lawyers would be prepared to lead the effort at resolution. Secondly, it will develop trust and friendship between in-house lawyers and key stakeholders, which, as mentioned above, is critical in times of crisis. I also encourage in-house lawyers to have a network of dependable external lawyers in every country where their company does business, which can be called upon in times of crisis.