44 LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
MAY 2018
| INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS |
eye on, as did the rest of the team."
Abdel-Aziz says that made it really im-
portant to help Egyptian government
and the client understand that "there was
effectively a third entity in the room that
everybody needs to be aligned with — and
that's the success of the project. And that
Gowling WLG as its princi-
pal legal counsel and it won
the bid.
Toronto-based Abdel-
Aziz, who was also the Ro-
satom project director, says
this was Egypt's first foray
into nuclear power generation with mul-
tiple reactors, "and it was a huge project
for the first time. I think more than any-
thing, that was the thing I hadto keep my
means you might do things differently
than in a more traditional confrontational
negotiation. "We tried to make sure every-
one understood that sometimes when you
win a point in this type of negotiation, ulti-
mately you may lose because you do it at the
expense of the project."
e negotiations were extensive. Gowl-
ing WLG helped negotiate the engineering,
procurement and construction contract,
the operations support and maintenance
contract, and the nuclear fuel supply and
the spent nuclear fuel (or nuclear waste)
contract. e legal team also provided stra-
tegic advice on risk management, project
delivery, regulatory and licensing require-
ments and nuclear liability using some law-
yers on the ground in Cairo as well as some
back in Canada.
Several of the negotiating teams were
huge, involving 20 people from each
side, with 40 or more people around the
table, Abdel-Aziz says. e stakes were
pretty big, too. e El Dabaa project is
the type of project, he says, that presents
significant project risk and like any large
infrastructure project, "when things go
sideways, the consequences are stagger-
ing in terms of the economic value and
policy implications."
In nuclear projects, unlike conven-
tional power projects, the lion's share of
investment is up-front capital costs, so a
lengthy delay can lead to debilitating in-
terest costs as well as the cost of the mas-
sive overhead, the committed resources
and the project team, both of which sit
idle "testing the ability of the parties to
absorb the additional cost and keep the
project going."
It was a test the negotiators passed. In
December, Egyptian President Abdel-
Fattah El-Sisi and his Russian counterpart,
Vladimir Putin, met in Cairo to sign an
agreement officially launching work. e
negotiations were a success.
Helping clients manage complex in-
ternational mega projects is a high-stakes
high-intensity workout for the lawyers be-
hind the scenes, but Abdel-Aziz and others
say it's never dull and for all the stress, when
things work well as they did in El Dabaa
and on scores of other such projects, there's
nothing they'd rather be doing.
When Rosatom, Russia's State Atomic Energy Corporation invited law firms to bid
on the legal work for building four nuclear power plants in Egypt, Gowling WLG won
the proposal with Toronto-based Ahab Abdel-Aziz put in charge, and even made
Rosatom project director.
How did Gowling WLG end up on a massive international mega project with not
a Canadian party in sight? "It's a really good question and my first reaction is,
would we be asking it if it were a British or an American firm?" says Abdel-Aziz,
Global Director of the firm's Nuclear Power Generation practice group. Probably not.
But with its deep expertise in areas such as nuclear, infrastructure, mining,
and oil and gas, Canadian lawyers can help steer clients of any nationality through
a project in any part of the world. And Gowling WLG has made a strategic business
decision to try and capitalize on that, says Abdel-Aziz. "We recognize that domestic
professional services firms in Western economies, for the most part, are facing
shrinking markets or, at best, markets that are flat. So our attention has increas-
ingly been turning outward."
Engineering firms, architects, financial services companies have been very proac-
tive about expanding into foreign markets, he says, law firms less so. But having
made the decision to look at new markets, Gowling WLG took stock of its assets
and, in nuclear, "what we have is a very strong line-up of people who have spent
decades working in every aspect of the nuclear sector. Canada is one of the original
nuclear countries in the world in terms of developing the technology. Ontario contin-
ues to be the second-largest contributor to the electric power grid, of nuclear,
after France. We have a lot of experience and expertise.
"Our objective has been to take that expertise and, with a mercantilist attitude,
establish ourselves as one of the leaders in the provision of legal services in the
nuclear sector. We took that proposition to the global market." The bottom line?
This mandate won the firm thousands of hours of work, says Abdel-Aziz.
In other words, expect to see more.
CANADIAN COUNSEL ABROAD
Sandy Rubin is a writer
and strategic consultant.
ILAN DUNSKY
>
DENTONS CANADA LLP
"The project was structured
so that the private company
would turn around and
subcontract everything to
a foreign company that would
actually design, build, finance
and operate the new facility."
