Profile

Toby Shnookal first qualified and gained experience as a Civil Engineer in the oil industry and then in civil construction before turning to the law. He is one of very few Senior Counsel in Australia with engineering qualification and experience. At one time he owned and operated a small construction company. Since 2016 he has practiced almost exclusively as a Neutral - Arbitrator, Expert Determiner, Facilitator, Mediator, Adjudicator and Counsel Assisting in Inquiries. He has BE (Civil), LLB (Hons) and a diploma in International  Arbitration (CIArb).  He is a co-author of Brooking on Building Contracts 4th Edition. He did articles with Professor John Sharkey AM and read with the Honourable Justice Digby.

Toby is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and a Grade 1 Arbitrator with Resolution Institute (formerly IAMA). For ten years he was a Sessional Member of VCAT hearing building disputes and conducting compulsory conferences. He is an accredited Advanced Mediator with the Victorian Bar. He has been appointed Facilitator by the Supreme and County Courts to assist in about 20 expert conclaves.  He is typically engaged in cases that involve engineering failures of design or construction issues that have lead to major cost growth and critical path delays. He has a great interest in how engineering and project issues manifest themselves into legal disputes and the most efficient means of resolving  them.

Toby's 30 year career in law has been focussed on major disputes in the TEC area and  has been spread over every state in Australia. His now highly specialist practice has been built on broader legal experience. In the first five years at the bar his practice, when not being led in major construction disputes, was typically as sole counsel in domestic arbitration (usually house construction),  general commercial court  work, civil procedure, planning, and crime.

Toby has significant experience in Hydrometallurgical processing both process design and equipment performance; oil and gas; tunnel design and construction; roads and bridges; software design; dams; co-generation; waste processing; pipelines; multistorey construction; concrete and steel; offshore platforms and floating processing (FPSO);  water and sewerage processing;  dredging; soils and foundation design and construction;  bulk material handling; machinery design; fatigue; electrical generation; quarrying; building regulation (BCA) especially fire, cladding and water proofing; structural failure; welding; lead paint and asbestos; reliability engineering; switchboards;  windfarm design, construction, and operation; recycling and solar generation.

Amongst other things Toby has been appointed as Court Appointed Special Referee, Arbitrator in ICC arbitrations and Expert Determiner in major infrastructure projects. Most commonly he is appointed as the neutral determiner by the agreement of the parties. He has published over 150 awards and determinations in his various roles as determiner. He has published numerous articles including on the role of superintendents during the course of a project, standard form contracting, performance based building regulation, the challenges of statutory adjudication, the role of experts in litigation and the role and ethics of forensic engineers.

Amongst the numerous committees Toby has served on he has been the chair of both the Arbitration and Adjudication Subcommittee of the Victorian Bar Dispute Resolution Committee, he was the last Chapter Chair of the Victorian Chapter of IAMA (before amalgamation with RI) and the first co-chair of Resolution Institute (after amalgamation). He was a national Director of IAMA.  He has been active on numerous subcommittees of IAMA and RI.  He is a member of the DRBF which promotes the use of Dispute Boards as a means of avoiding disputes during major projects. He has been a director of both the Springvale and St Kilda Legal Services, a number of private companies and he remains a passionate Member of the Shoreham Foreshore Reserve Committee of Management.