Roberta Downey

Practice Areas

Roberta is Head of the firm’s International Construction group. She is based in our London office with close to 30 years of experience in commercial dispute resolution, including large trials and highly technical disputes where teamwork together with strategic thinking, effective legal argument and detailed analysis of the evidence is required.

Roberta’s practice focuses first and foremost on the construction, engineering and energy industries. That industry focus has allowed her to build a portfolio of both domestic and international work that spans the full spectrum of energy, power, and major infrastructure projects, including thermal power plants, renewable energy projects, LNG facilities, petrochemical facilities, iconic urban regeneration projects, engineering support services, rail infrastructure, telecommunications, wastewater treatment, recycling facilities, data centres, and automated equipment and control systems. She is particularly well known in the market for her work in relation to offshore wind farms, on which she published a prize-winning paper for the Society of Construction Law.

Roberta focuses on practical and commercial solutions to complex issues that arise throughout the lifecycle of major projects, where she has advised all the key participants in the supply chain: developers, owners, contractors, subcontractors, consultants, and manufacturers. While she is a firm believer in proactive project management to avoid disputes, she always has an eye on positioning clients to best achieve their objectives and is as comfortable managing large trials on highly technical disputes in litigation and arbitration as she is in performing early case assessments, and conducting mediations, adjudications and other forms of alternative dispute resolution, whatever the jurisdiction or location of the project.