www.canadianlawyermag.com 45
CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTS ARE RISK
ALLOCATION DEVICES – AND AI IS
CHANGING THE REVIEW
Construction contracts seek to allocate risk to
each party, and getting that balance right can
make the difference between a billion-dollar
project's success or failure. That framing sits
at the core of how Yonni Fushman leads the
legal and risk management function at Bird
Construction, one of Canada's largest publicly
traded general contractors. A year into his role
as executive vice president and chief legal
officer, Fushman is navigating an industry at
an inflection point – shaped by collaborative
contract models, AI-assisted legal review, and
an acquisition strategy that keeps landing new
businesses on his team's doorstep.
"Most of the businesses we acquire have
never had an in-house legal function," he says.
"So our focus is on demonstrating through
every interaction that we're responsive,
solution-oriented, and practical."
Poorly designed contracts in the industry
have sometimes forced contractors to absorb
risks outside their control, Fushman says. "It
reached an inflection point probably starting
five to seven years ago, where the contracting
community broadly started to push back." The
pushback produced a new generation of models
– alliance contracting, integrated project delivery,
progressive design-build – each featuring target
prices rather than fixed prices and a collab-
orative front-end phase that can run up to two
years. "It's the adage of measure twice, cut once
so that you have a more efficient and effective
project execution plan," he says. "We're seeing
very large, significant projects now executed
without any of that commercial friction."
Since joining Bird, Fushman's team has
developed a custom tool to quantify systemic
risks. "We've done a lot of testing on it, and it's
pretty accurate," Fushman says. "It's picking up
most of the key issues."
On hiring, Fushman's thinking has shifted.
"My approach has definitely evolved to hiring
the person, not the resume," he says. "Every
good hire I've made has been on the basis of
fit and aptitude."
YONNI FUSHMAN
Company: Bird Construction Inc.
Title: Executive vice president & chief legal
officer
