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Walter Iannucci

Founding Partner · Chair, Construction Group

Construction · Philadelphia

Walter Iannucci is brought in when a building project has run over budget or behind schedule and the contract will decide who pays for it: an owner holding retainage over a punch list that never closes, a subcontractor told its change orders were never authorized, an apartment tower that opened fourteen months late with every party blaming someone else’s work. He chairs Harwell Brandt’s Construction Group and handles construction disputes in the Courts of Common Pleas of Philadelphia and the surrounding counties, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, before the Pennsylvania Board of Claims, and in arbitrations under the American Arbitration Association’s Construction Industry Arbitration Rules. His clients are general contractors, subcontractors, owners, developers, and the sureties that bond their projects.

Representative matters

  1. Represented the general contractor on a twenty-two-story apartment tower in University City in an arbitration against the developer after the project finished fourteen months late. Lead counsel before a three-arbitrator panel at a fifteen-day hearing, with the delay case built on a forensic analysis of the project’s critical path. At stake: the unpaid contract balance and retainage, the contractor’s extended general conditions, and the developer’s counterclaim for liquidated damages.

  2. Represented a heavy civil contractor on a claim against a Commonwealth agency arising from the reconstruction of a highway interchange in Chester County, where excavation struck rock that the borings in the bid documents did not show. Lead counsel from the claim filed with the contracting officer through the hearing before the Pennsylvania Board of Claims. At stake: the cost of removing the rock and the delay it caused to every trade that followed.

  3. Represented a mechanical subcontractor on a hospital expansion in Montgomery County after the general contractor withheld payment on approved change orders. Lead counsel in the Court of Common Pleas of Montgomery County on claims under the Contractor and Subcontractor Payment Act and on a mechanics’ lien claim filed within six months after the subcontractor completed its work. At stake: the unpaid balance, with the interest, penalty and attorney’s fees the Payment Act allows. The case resolved before trial.

  4. Represented the surety on a contractor’s performance and payment bonds after the contractor defaulted midway through a municipal authority’s water treatment plant upgrade in Bucks County. Lead counsel on the takeover agreement with the authority, the selection of a completion contractor, and the claims of unpaid subcontractors and suppliers under the Public Works Contractors’ Bond Law of 1967. At stake: the surety’s exposure on both bonds.

  5. Advised the developer of a laboratory and office building in Philadelphia on its contracts with the architect and the construction manager, built on AIA forms. Negotiated how the contracts allocated delay, unforeseen site conditions and design errors, and conformed them to the construction lender’s requirements. At stake: an opening date the developer had committed to its anchor tenant.

Representative matters describe the lawyer’s role and what was at stake. Each matter turned on its own facts and law, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

How the work is done

He starts a dispute with the project records, not the pleadings: the daily reports, the schedule updates, the change order log and the meeting minutes. In the first week he reads the notice provisions in the prime contract and every subcontract, because in Pennsylvania a missed notice deadline can end a claim that is otherwise sound. He retains the scheduling and cost experts before positions harden, and has them report to the client what the records show, including where they cut against it. When a construction case goes to a jury, he tries it with the firm’s Litigation Group. On owner-side contracts, he drafts with the claims he has litigated in mind.

Before Harwell Brandt

He worked for two years as a field engineer for a general contractor building schools and hospitals in the Philadelphia suburbs before law school. He practiced in the construction group of a large Philadelphia firm from 1988 to 1996, then was one of the five lawyers who founded Harwell Brandt.