ESG Risks in Construction Law: Adding Teeth to the Governance of Construction Supply Chains

Dr Armando Castro and Dr Mohamad El Daouk

April 2025

Commended entry in the SCL Hudson Prize 2024, published in the SCL Journal: Spring 2025

The paper considers the implications of UK construction law on Environmental, Social, and Governance issues, especially the governance of construction supply chains. The authors consider: does current UK legislation align with ESG considerations for the governance of construction supply chains? How might contractual provisions deliver governance oversight and robust enforcement? Are current UK governance and contractual legislative frameworks merely symbolic, yielding unenforceable ESG commitments from the construction industry? What measures may be implemented to add ‘teeth’ to the enforcement of governance commitments? The paper presents a novel perspective explaining how statutes can be aligned with ESG objectives to enhance construction supply chain governance, and aims to move the discourse from purely theoretical discussions of ESG governance to enforceable solutions for governing construction supply chains.

1. Introduction – 2. Construction supply chains, governance in the UK, and ESG – 3. Bribery and corruption – Failure to prevent bribery – Putting the Bribery Act into practice – 4. Modern slavery and human trafficking – 5. Governance in ESG: enforcing clauses in construction contracts – Joint Contracts Tribunal – New Engineering Contract – Fédération Internationale des Ingénieurs-Conseils – 6. Conclusion

The authors: Armando Castro is Associate Professor at the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London and a pupil barrister 

Mohamad El Daouk is a lecturer at the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London

Text: 15 pages