Hi! I’m Kheng Hoe and I’m a construction lawyer.

I handle construction disputes, dealing mainly with arbitration and litigation matters including appeals. I love the interplay between legal and technical aspects of the practice, and I love the fact that my work is not confined to deciphering only the legal principles but also engineering, construction, architectural concepts and project management practices. And yes, I love to argue.

To be frank, I did not always love the law. In fact, when I first graduated from the University of Malaya way back in 1996, I felt so ill-fitted to the legal profession that I chose to undertake social work instead. Thanks to newspaper reports then that the Government was considering to change the pupillage period from 9 months to 2 years, I decided to take the plunge to start my legal career by commencing pupillage with Messrs Allen & Gledhill, being called to the Malaysian Bar in 1998.
After practising for only one year, I then embarked on starting my own firm. That was a foolhardy move, which helped me develop more guts than glory.

From 2002, I started handling construction disputes. I remembered to be so nervous in my first case, due to the voluminous documents and technical concepts involved, and having to face up to a much more senior construction law practitioner to boot. I worked harder than I knew I could for that case, and learned that I could actually hold my own.

Today, I am no longer the rookie in the game. My practice is almost entirely comprised of construction disputes. I sit on the Contracts and Practices committee of the Master Builders Association of Malaysia (MBAM) and helped launch the MBAM Mediation Centre (now under the auspices of the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB)). I was also part of the CIDB committee to review the CIDB Standard Form of Contracts 2022, introducing novel concepts such as the early warning system, compensation events and the use of dispute avoidance boards. The CIDB Form is the first to incorporate such elements into a standard form of contract in Malaysia.

I consistently deliver talks to the industry, less consistently write simply because I don’t have time, and maintain a YouTube channel. I hold an LLB (Hons) from University of Malaya, LLM in Construction Law with Distinction from the University of Salford, and am a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. I am an arbitrator, adjudicator and mediator with the Asian International Arbitration Centre (AIAC), a mediator and assessor for the Malaysian International Mediation Centre (MIMC), and a host of other Fellow-ships.

If you want to get in touch, drop me a note at [email protected].