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In this episode of the MECRA podcast, host Jonathan Eveley interviews Susanna Neubolt, a partner at DLA Piper, about commercial management and contractual disputes in the Middle East construction industry. Neubolt explains that commercial management involves various responsibilities such as valuing work, managing costs and cash flow, ensuring timely delivery and quality, and administering contracts. She also discusses the challenges of late payments in the industry and suggests that changing mindsets and implementing regulations can help alleviate this issue. Neubolt further addresses the impact of client variations or changes on commercial issues and explains the complexities involved in managing and negotiating variations. She emphasizes the importance of following the contract mechanism to ensure timely extensions of time and payment for additional costs. Welcome, everyone, to our latest episode in Series 2 of MECRA, the Middle East Construction and Real Estate Podcast. Thank you, as always, for joining us. I am your host, Jonathan Eveley, and I'm delighted to be joined on this episode by Susanna Neubolt, partner at DLA Piper. Susanna has been based in the Middle East since 2010. She is well known as a thought leader in the construction industry, appointed to the RICS Market Advisory Board, the UAE Construction Think Tank, and the British Business Group Construction Focus Group. Susanna is ranked in Chambers and Partners, a leading individual in the Eagle 500, and a thought leader in Who's Who construction. She has been praised for her strategic thinking, good risk appraisal, and construction industry knowledge. So, let's get into discussion with Susanna and find out more about the advice she provides to the Middle East construction industry, commercial management, and dealing with contractual disputes and claims. Susanna, welcome to this episode of the MECRA Middle East Construction and Real Estate Podcast. It's great to have you with us. Thank you very much indeed for joining me. Well, thank you for inviting me, Jonathan. It's great to be able to discuss some of the challenges the industry faces with you again. Great. Looking forward to it. Navigating construction contracts, particularly in terms of commercial management and claims procedures, is a very complex and challenging process. With that backdrop, could you please start by explaining for us the key basic fundamentals of what actually commercial management is on a construction project? Well, I'll certainly try. Commercial management really is a term that encompasses many disciplines and responsibilities on a construction project. I would say it spans valuing the work, supply chain management, managing costs, losses, the cash flow of the project, and, of course, ensuring delivery to time, and managing delay and the recovery of delay when it occurs, as well as making sure the project achieves the quality obligations. But overlaying all of those things is contract administration. Only one of those activities will appear in one or more contracts, and those contracts allocate responsibility and risk, and then to a greater or lesser degree, depending whose contract it is, set out mechanisms to manage the risk events. So administering the contract, or put another way, following the requirements of the mechanisms in the contract across all aspects that I've described is a critical component of commercial management. OK. That's great. That's a really good overview. What I'd like to do is to delve straight in and unpack some of those things that you've just said, if that's OK. If we accept, and maybe it's a bit of a sad acceptance, often operate within, let's just call it a late payment environment, what do you think needs to or could happen to change that narrative or landscape? For example, are there any regulations that could be implemented to improve the situation, do you think? Mm-hmm. Well, I think changing the late payment environment actually starts with changing mindsets. I think we still need some education to understand that if you start a project with cash flow, it creates problems. It causes delay. It can drive prices up. It can cause insolvency in the supply chain, and frequently, of course, it results in disputes. So I think there's a bit of education needed there and an understanding of why it's not in anybody's interests to starve the project with cash flow. And so late payments are really unhelpful for everyone. But there are measures that governments can take. Governments can introduce maximum timescales for payments on their projects, for example. And we do see some discipline within government entities in that regard. New legislation, as you mentioned, could help. There are a number of jurisdictions around the world that have outlawed pay when paid clauses in contracts, and they're those clauses that allow a contractor to pay a subcontractor only when they themselves have been paid. So outlawing those provisions means that money can keep flowing through the supply chain and alleviate some pressure lower down the supply chain. But in the meantime, as we don't have that legislation here in the Middle East, there is the use of project bank accounts, which can be used to alleviate payment concerns. In a project bank account, it is, as it sounds, a bank account for the project, and all parties in the value chain are paid from the same pot, and they're paid directly. So the money doesn't have to flow through others, so there isn't the risk that it might be spent elsewhere. And then finally, we might not have to look too far in the future to see blockchain-backed contracts which have automatic release of payments. And together with the use of AI to objectively measure progress of the works, this could operate to remove or at least reduce human intervention in the payment process, which is really what leads to the late payments we see today. Yeah, interesting. So fundamentally, cash flow is critical. Is it reasonable to assume that a lot of the issues or challenges that we see being caused from a commercial perspective are the result of client variations or changes, and the resultant claims for extensions of time and prolongation costs? If that is the case, can you give us an overview of what variations or client changes are, and how they should be negotiated and managed commercially, and ultimately ensure they get paid? Yeah, it's certainly fair to say that client changes or variations are quite a major cause of some of these commercial issues in projects here in the Middle East. It isn't the fault of a variation per se, they're familiar parts of construction contracts, but I think it's the coming together of several factors, which I'll mention in just a moment. So to answer the first part of your question, what is a change or a variation? It's where a contractor is asked to do something that's not included in the scope of work, or that's different to what's included in the scope of work. Now that sounds very simple, but of course it isn't. So one of the first problems is it's often not clear whether something was included in the scope of work. So, for example, if I ask you to build me a house, were you also required to build the path to get to the house? Another example is that changes and variations might not be to what you have to do, but to the way it's done, or the way it's sequenced to work around others. Another thing could be that a change could arise because it's not possible to build it as designed, or it could be because a restriction put on the contractor midway through a project in respect to something that he was otherwise free to decide how to address himself. So going back to my house example, if I asked you to build me a house with adequate natural lights, you go away and plan to build me a house with six windows, and then midway through the process I say, actually, I require ten windows in my house, then I've just changed the scope. I've narrowed your freedom to build as you were able to do from the scope of works I gave to you in the initial contract. So there are many ways in which variations are not as simple as they sound in terms of the scope of what is being varied. But then there's a second layer that creates problems for us, and that's the question of whether the contractor has actually been asked to do something differently. Is there an instruction? And what if it's just a casual comment on site, or it came back as a note on a drawing that was submitted to approval? There's always questions around whether those aspects are variations. So if you take into account that variations are not always straightforward, there is the potential for them to be problematic, but they are, I think, even more problematic in this region, as I said, as a result of several factors. And that is that, firstly, contractors typically have been engaged on construct or build only contracts here, and often before the design is sufficiently developed, there's always a race to break ground and get started. That's common, isn't it, in the region, very common. Yeah, and the result of that is often there's then ambiguity over what was or wasn't included in the scope and the tendered contract price as that design is then developed and delivered. So I think that problem, together with a lack of appreciation, often, as to the impact of late changes, is probably what we see here. I mean, we simply see more variations and changes in this region than we tend to do elsewhere. So I think you did ask me about what we can do about it and how we should deal with variations. So the starting point is that all construction contracts provide a mechanism for dealing with variations. As I said, the variations are a familiar part of construction, and those construction contracts containing those mechanisms tend to require that there is a written instruction or that there's written confirmation of an oral instruction, followed by the contractor issuing an estimate of the time and cost impact, and then a formal instruction to proceed. But we don't tend to see that followed here, and often there's then an unwillingness to accept that what might have been a casual instruction to do something amounts to a change or variation in the scope of work. So my example of someone making a casual comment about how something is going to be delivered when they're walking the site, then that's the lack of acceptance of something as a variation tends to be compounded by contractors not insisting on the mechanism in the contract being followed. And the result is that extensions of time are not granted, contemporaneously at least, and additional costs are not paid, which again creates problems for the cash flow of the project as a whole. So it's trite, but the best practice is to follow the contract mechanism. Yeah, quite, yeah. The point you make about starting projects too quickly, I mean, as I say, it does seem to be far too common for clients to want to rush to start projects too quickly. You know, inevitably that puts pressure then on the team to get the accuracy of things like cost and program and specifications and all sorts of other details right. But sadly, it does seem, as I say, far too commonplace in this region. And so are there any de-risking options for firms across the supply chain to mitigate the resultant payment risks from disputes over things like variations? I mean, is there anything that companies can do? I think I would start by saying early engagement. So taking variations as an example, some of them are the result of someone's whim, others are because it's not possible to build what's been designed. But whatever the reason is, if the issue's raised early and the parties insist on following the contract mechanism and are realistic about the time and cost impact of that change or variation, then there's much more prospect of it being amicably resolved and not resulting in a dispute between the parties. Addressing things contemporaneously are key. But I would also say that there are some methods that can just help keep that relationship on track. And one of those might be to make payments on accounts if it can't be agreed at the time whether or not something is a change or variation. Rather than that to hold things up or that result in starving cash flow throughout the supply chain, a payment on account could be a good mechanism to share the risk where it's uncertain and to keep cash flowing. Sure, sure. So there are some things that can be done. I'd like to move, if we can, to I guess a related but slightly different subject, and that's the whole topic of procurement. There are, of course, many different types of procurement routes available. Can you give us an overview of the main or perhaps typical more common methods of procurement used and why an individual project might use one? Sure. Certainly here in this region, lump sum contracts are still the most popular. And a fixed price or lump sum contract is where the contractor agrees to a fixed price to deliver the scope of works. And the amount won't change unless, of course, there are variations. But the contractor has agreed to take on the risk of quantities changing and often actually also the risk of price fluctuations too, which, as an aside, has been a real problem post-COVID when material prices have shot up and contractors have been left having to carry that burden. But because the contractor takes the risk of all of those things and the price is fixed at the outset, this tends to be favoured here as it's seen as offering the client greater certainty as to the overall cost of the project. And it can be incredibly successful where the project scope is clear and if there are likely to be a few complications or changes to the design. And although, as we've heard, that's often not the case here and we do see lots of complications and changes, unfortunately. But that's certainly the most popular form of procurement here in the Middle East. Rarely, but occasionally, we see remeasurement contracts or elements of a contract which are really measurable. And this is where the contractor is paid for the actual quantity of work carried out against agreed rates for component parts. So it tends to be used when it's not possible to adequately quantify work at the time of the tender. And then also infrequently, we do see cost reimbursable contracts, which are also known as cost plus contracts, which are, as they sound, where the cost of the project is fully transparent and the contractor receives what his costs are plus an agreed overhead and profit percentage on top of that cost. And those sorts of contracts really lend themselves to projects where design and quality are the biggest priority over that certainty of cost. And the reason for that is it allows clients the greatest control over the design and quality. And what's, I think, really interesting here in the Middle East is that we can all point to lots of projects that that really would have suited. So many world's first type projects we see here is really complicated engineering feats tried for the first time that would have been ideally suited to a cost reimbursable contract. And unfortunately, there are also a number of those which we can point to that have actually been lump sum. And the result is that there's been extensive cost overrun and time overrun for the contract, which has inevitably resulted in disputes. And aside from those that you've mentioned, Susannah, and again, I guess, overriding all of them, there should be ideally a balanced, fair and reasonable position to both parties, which, again, sadly, we don't always see. But aside from the ones you touched on, are there any new innovative procurement options that any companies are working with that do or might make payment security better or just even the overall way of working a bit more collaborative? Well, there are certainly other methods of procurement used by the industry. And many of the big companies that operate here in the Middle East will be using these sorts of methods elsewhere in the world. A great example is target sum. And that's where there is, as it sounds, a target sum for the contractor to bring the project in at. But the contractor then shares in any cost if it goes above that target sum, but also takes a share in any savings if it comes in below that target sum. So we also call it sharing the pain or the gain. And so that's one mechanism that's available and tried and tested. And something very similar to that is guaranteed maximum price, which is pretty much exactly the same. But there's a cap on where the contractor might get to with the project before they take all of the pain. And there's other methods as well, like management contracting, where a consultant manages the delivery of the project through an engagement of a series of contractors rather than what we tend to see with the typical main contractor scenario. And these methods are methods that are used by the industry that have been around for as long as I've been practicing, but I haven't seen them in use in the Middle East. They're not new, though. And if I was to try and point to some newer approaches, a great one, I think, that answers your question about more collaborative methods of contracting would be alliance contracting. And that is used. It's very big in Australia, for example, and in some other parts of the world as well. And that's aimed at ensuring that all parties are incentivized to work together to achieve a common goal. So a bit like the target sum, you've got the contractor sharing in the pain or gain. But in alliance contracting, you've got all of the value chain sharing in the success or otherwise of the project. So there's perhaps the most collaborative method of procurement out there. But again, I'm afraid it's not here just yet. Yeah. Again, it seems that this region sadly lacks behind other parts of the world in these types of what we might regard as slightly more progressive ways of working. Anyway, let's keep hoping that something changes, I guess. But again, back to the point. Inevitably, many projects do end up in conflict and dispute. And again, to some extent, the nature of the industry we're in. As a construction lawyer, what would you say is your overall approach to construction disputes or conflicts? Well, I think first off, it's really important to make an early assessment of the legal liability and to understand what the stakes are in terms of the quantum that attaches to that. So what is the loss that has been suffered or might be suffered? And that's key to managing the expectations and also helping our clients, be it a contractor, developer, consultant, but helping them to have a realistic understanding of what they might stand to lose or recover. Once you've done that, once I've done that, the next step is always to consider how it might be resolved without resourcing to a formal process like arbitration. And we do that by setting a strategy for settlement. It will always be faster, more cost effective and spare the business the cost of management hours and distraction if a settlement can be reached. So it's a really crucial element of the strategy and process for dealing with a dispute. But if it is necessary for that dispute to go to a formal process like court or arbitration, there must still be a settlement strategy running alongside. And clients often need reminding that commencing a formal dispute doesn't actually bring an end to the settlement opportunities, but there are many points throughout the process where there are avenues to have those discussions for settlement. And a line for that, and this is a key part of delivering the dispute for the client, for our clients, are that it's necessary to maintain a good relationship with the other party, the other side. And that relationship can either be maintained through senior members of the two companies in the dispute, ideally senior members that are set remittances, senior members that are set removed from the detail, or it's not possible because the relationship simply broken down between the parties, then the lawyers should maintain a more amicable relationship between them. And the reason for that is that always needs to be an avenue for constructive communication if there's any hope of a if there's to be any hope of a Swiss resolution. So they would be my basic principles for delivery on working through handling a construction dispute. Beyond that, on something a little bit more specific, I would say it's also crucial that we have access to all relevant documents in every form. And construction disputes are incredibly document heavy. And with the proliferation of electronic communication, both formal and informal, managing the data sets a huge part of any disputes. So this is a point that needs to be tackled early on. Because too often, a key piece of information surfacing late into the dispute can significantly change that initial assessment on liability and outcomes. So I think they would be my key pointers. Yeah. And again, that last point you made about, you know, the volume of data involved and information that has been collated has a huge impact on resource requirements, which I'm going to come to a little bit later on. Yeah. So now before we leave this point, what are some of the, I guess, pitfalls faced by companies in their commercial management activities? And why do you think these companies often fail to adopt or follow the good practices that you've just talked about? Well, I guess there's a variety of different aspects and a variety of different reasons, but to touch on a few, it does sound really basic. But often the people involved in the delivery of the project are not actually familiar with the contract that they're delivering. And this goes for clients, main contractors, subcontractors and the consultants working with them. And construction contracts are, as I've mentioned before, but more than most contracts full of mechanisms to follow. So often not following the mechanisms can have significant consequences. We discussed that in the context of variations. But lack of familiarity with those mechanisms can often result in notices that are required to be issued, not being issued or not being issued within the deadlines prescribed by the contract. And that can often mean no recovery of time or cost overruns. So significant, significant consequence of not being familiar with the contract that's being delivered. In terms of why that sometimes happens, one, you know, I guess everybody is busy and the day job gets in the way. But there are also challenges created by cultural differences or cultural assumptions. And one that I hear the most is the party thinks it might be seen as aggressive to issue a notice or to follow the contract. Or in fact, it's often termed as be contractual. And I've spoken a lot to Korean companies, for example, about this. But simply, I mean, the advice is the contract requires it. And if you don't do it, you can lose the ability to recover a significant project losses. And if I was to pick on another wide generalization, the Japanese contractors tend to focus on finding solutions. So they're very engineering focused and they'll look to find a solution to the exclusion of actually ensuring that they're going to be compensated for the additional work they put into that. So there are real cultural differences in approach that I think are all sort of come together here because the Middle East is so multicultural in terms of the businesses that operate here. Sure. And then if I if I just actually go back to what I said about data, we talked about the volume of that data. One of the more recent pitfalls we see now is in relation to the use of informal methods of communication, like WhatsApp. And it's very convenient. It's often seen as the most efficient way of communicating by various different parties involved in the delivery of the project. But it can create problems. So, for example, the brevity of the communication can cause ambiguity. And we can all think about times when we've assumed a text message meant something and the sender actually intended it to mean something else. And that's even when we know the person sending it very well. And so imagine the potential for ambiguity there between different parties on it, on the delivery of a project. But it's not just that. The ease of firing off a quick, informal message can mean that the communication is ill thought out and results in unintended consequences as well. And finally, one of the most frustrating things from my perspective is that people unwittingly think they can use it to avoid doing something in writing. I might go back to the changes and variations that we talked about earlier, but whatever it is, it is in writing. Once it's in a WhatsApp or a text message, it's there, it's documented and it carries the same weight. And, of course, that's without good old auto-correct playing its part. Yeah, that's a really good point. Susanna, I'd like to move. I'm interested just now, actually, I'd like to move into the subject of resourcing, because it's obviously a huge issue for parties to have to resource up the claims activities that we're talking about, certainly on major projects. Apart from a company's own in-house commercial team of QSs and commercial managers and planners, what other resources or specialists might be required or used when preparing a detailed contractual claim? First off, external cost consultants are often used for preparing a contractual claim because they are familiar with putting together all of the substantiation needed to support a claim. And that is actually a slightly different discipline to, for example, substantiating a payment application. So we certainly see external cost consultants used. And then also we often see delay consultants needed to demonstrate entitlement to an extension of time. And again, it's a different discipline to the discipline that a party might already carry in-house, such as a programmer who's proactively programming works or programming to mitigate delay. A forensic delay consultant looks at it after the event to demonstrate why there is an entitlement to an extension of time. So in terms of the contractual claims, I would say they're the main disciplines that we see coming into play. When it then comes to a formal process like arbitration, we invariably need a quantum expert. So that's, it could be the same person who does that for cost consultant preparation of claims, but with a different hat on. And usually not in the same case, because if they've helped make the claim, they can't be the expert that is independent with a duty to a tribunal, who's sitting there as an expert witness in the claim as well. But essentially, it's the same discipline. So invariably, we need a quantum expert. And in this region, invariably, we need a forensic delay expert as well. As you know, most projects are delayed here. And beyond that, we also often need what we tend to term technical experts. And these are people that are experts in design or in specific trades that can opine on very specific aspects of a dispute. And examples might be electrical experts or clothing experts. And those are used to opine on whether an element of the works is defective, for example, or to assist a court or tribunal in understanding whether or not an alleged change or variation was something that fell within or without the original scope of work. So those are the key resources that come into play, alongside lawyers, of course, when preparing claims. Without getting into too much detail, could we just look at the various forms of that are in use in the Middle East? I mean, FIDIC, obviously, being the most common, but also some clients I know like to use their own contracts. What do you believe is the best or most appropriate form of contract, if there even is one? And are some more preferable than others? Or is it really a case of horses for courses? Well, as you say, in the Middle East, it tends to be FIDIC. Or often where clients are using their own form of contract is a heavily amended own form of FIDIC contract. I think that's that's the type of contract we tend to see in various guises. But the main rule when it comes to standard form contracts is that actually they should not be heavily amended. And they've all been very thoughtfully created with lots of input across a wide variety of stakeholders. And they've been drafted to be broadly fair, broadly even handed between the parties. And once they're heavily amended, that balance is gone. And that's what we often see here, where we see the heavily amended versions of FIDIC. I think in terms of the approach to using contracts and which contracts to use, I think I would say whichever you're using, best practice and, of course, common sense is to allocate the risk in that contract to the party best able to manage it. And unfortunately, that's a practice that doesn't tend to be followed, believe it or not. So a review of the risk profile is really important, as is understanding how as a policy entering into a contract that you're going to manage those risks. I mean, I would say in terms of managing those risks, that one should price the risks. But unfortunately, that also creates challenges in this jurisdiction. Well, of course, and I guess ultimately, it's going to boil down to some negotiation. And ultimately, knowing where your own, I guess, corporate stop point or break point is as to how far you're prepared to go to sort of bend over, if you like. And equally, it will often, I guess, depend on how, can I say, desperate a contractor might be to secure an award as to how far he's prepared to go. Yeah, that risk appetite and understanding where that lies is absolutely crucial in negotiating and closing out those contracts. And you see that change for businesses as well. We've all seen many businesses come and go in the Middle East because they've taken that view on risk appetite and it hasn't worked for them. I just want to quickly go back to claims consultants, if I can. It seems to me, over the past, I don't know, 10 years or so, there's been a rapid growth in the number of claims consultants in the UAE or the Middle East region. So it's obviously been a growing sector. Would you say it's become almost too easy, if that's the right word, or perhaps acceptable for companies to enter into claims activities too quickly, rather than trying to resolve the issue in a more amicable, constructive and collaborative way? I wonder if there are a number of factors at play that have led to that sort of growth. I think, seriously, it's probably fair to say that the companies operating here are less likely to carry the in-house resource that they might carry elsewhere in the world. So perhaps there's a need for more external resource in that regard. But that aside, there's also another aspect at play here, I think, and that's that there are some entities, and actually, when we think of who the main employers or clients are in this region, there are quite a number of entities who really need a third party to issue a decision. They need someone else to issue something that says what the outcome should be. And for those parties, those entities, amicable resolution is a lot more problematic. So again, there's a need to involve a third party. And if that's not in a formal dispute, then it's still by the introduction of an external third party to the process. And then I think it's probably also fair to say that a culture has developed whereby fully substantiated claims are required before the other parties even prepared to enter into a dialogue. And that's not necessarily the same everywhere in the world and possibly hasn't always been here as well. But sometimes I think this is a governance issue, the requirement for a much more fully substantiated claim before engaging. But sometimes it's just a trust issue between the parties. And I think, paradoxically, engaging a consultant to prepare the claim often makes that trust issue worse. Because they tend, with the best intentions, obviously, but they tend at best to maximize the contractor's entitlement when they put that together, or at worst, grossly inflate it. But that has an impact. It has an impact on how it's received and the relationship between the parties. So again, yeah, I mean, almost saying that they're trying to justify their position almost. And again, the same rule applies, I guess, is don't enter into those sorts of situations lightly if you can avoid it. I want to put you on the spot just a little bit, if I may. And I'm not sure how much you can divulge, but could you share any examples of successful resolution of disputes or claims that you individually or DLA Piper have achieved on construction projects? And maybe just give some of the strategies that were employed to achieve that successful outcome. Well, you pre-empted that it's rather difficult for me to give you specific examples. But what I can say is there are common themes. And where there is successful resolution of claims, it tends to be where two things are present. One is good organization and management of records so that they can be presented, shared, considered by both parties. And the other is good communication between the parties. And that's particularly where parties have built up a level of trust by demonstrably behaving reasonably throughout the contract. And when those two limbs, those two aspects are present, claims tend to either be resolved, or at least they can be significantly narrowed between the parties, meaning that any further third party intervention for the resolution of the dispute can be much more efficient and handled far more efficiently and cost effectively. Yeah, it's been great speaking with you. It's been extremely informative for me, and I'm sure the audience. So thank you so much for sharing the time. It's a busy, busy time for you with lots of traveling. Before I let you go though, Suzanne, one thing we do like to do in these podcasts is just to leave the listeners with some sort of key takeaway or nugget of information or a message, I guess. If you were to offer one piece of advice regarding commercial management to the listeners, what would it be? Well, I think I would have to stick with the theme of familiarity with contract terms and making sure that they're followed. But I want to turn it into a really positive nugget. And that is that we're seeing different contract terms on projects in Saudi. And we're seeing where historically we haven't, things like dispute adjudication boards. We're seeing methods of engineer determination that differ from those that we've seen otherwise because they have teeth and they have ways of enforcing them. And so I would say, look out for these new contract terms, understand what they mean to you in your business, and then embrace them because it's the inclusion of these and the way in which they are indeed being implemented that will lead to fewer expensive and time consuming disputes in the future. That's great advice. And I guess overriding that is to get the sort of advice and review of those terms as early as possible, rather than leaving it too late when, you know, certain situations may be overtaking you. So that's great advice. Thank you. Thank you, Susanna. And look, thank you so much for sparing your time to join me on this episode. It's been fascinating, very, very informative. So finally, all I'd like to do is just to wish you and BLA Piper continued success, both in the Middle East region and globally for the future. Susanna, thank you very much indeed. Thank you, Jonathan. That brings an end to this episode of the Middle East Construction and Real Estate podcast. Thank you for listening to this one, or any of our previous episodes, all of which you can still find via the MACRA LinkedIn page, as well as all the usual places you use to listen to your podcasts. It would really help us if you could like and subscribe on our LinkedIn or Instagram pages. Thank you. A big thank you also to the team behind the scenes who do all the hard work in preparing these podcasts, editing them and getting them ready for posting for you to listen to. Please let us know if you have any suggestions for future topics or speakers. 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