About GGC Law

CHOOSING GGCLAW – AN OVERVIEW

Mr Glenn George Cheng leads GGCLaw as an international specialist practitioner and independent arbitrator with almost 30 years of experience in energy projects (focusing on offshore E&P and onshore plant developments), on/offshore civil and marine heavy engineering and infrastructure construction, as well as onshore built-environment projects (including housing, and mixed-usage land and real estate developments). Mr Cheng is widely known in the industry for high-valued and technically complex projects in the areas of offshore (hydrocarbon) exploration work, rig/vessel/platform and associated asset design and fabrication projects, on/offshore heavy engineering and infrastructure (particularly in large blue-water civil and marine engineering and on/offshore ports) construction work. The move to establish GGCLaw as a highly exclusive and bespoke practice follows a long and distinguished career as a Singapore-based partner in renowned private international practices including British and European multi-national brands: Norton Rose, CMS Nabarro, Kennedys Legal Solutions, as well as US global giant K&L Gates Straits Law. Mr Cheng is joined in GGCLaw, by the following specialists.

Mr Kewee Kho is equally experienced with close to 30 years focused on investments, corporate and financial advisory to institutional and private clients. His experience spans multiple roles between markets in the US and Asia-Pacific. These roles have involved investment banking, private equity, venture capital, investments, corporate and business development, corporate finance, entrepreneur, and business management responsibilities covering a broad spectrum of industries. Mr Kho is an independent director of The Private Museum, SGX-listed MS Holdings Limited and Zhongmin Baihui Retail Group Ltd. He was previously a board member of Lee Metal Group Limited and Courts Asia Limited. Mr Kho has been involved in over 200 SME, MNC, private and public company transactions during his professional career and personal investments, executing capital raising, M&A, private equity, and proprietary investment deals. The sum of all transaction deals executed at this stage of his career is valued in excess of US$2.5 billion. Mr Kho is a non-legal advisor to GGCLaw’s clients, and he sits as a non-shareholding consultant in GGCLaw. He is a Fellow of Singapore Institute of Arbitrators and a member of the Singapore Institute of Directors.

Together, GGCLaw stands for close to 60 years of professional and entrepreneurial experience. Together we are emblematical of our branding strapline: True Experience.

GGCLaw’s ideology today is to provide a direct client-facing bespoke suite of legal services comprising the following scope:

• (Outsourced) “External-In-House” Project Counsel, or “Trusted Advisor” roles in commercial and legalistic/technical matters.
• Major energy/infrastructure/engineering and construction projects related advisory services comprising a complete and holistic “tender-to-completion-commissioning” scope of bid assessment support, contractual drafting and negotiation, day-to-day advice on delivery controls and performance risks, preparations, “sense checks” and management of claims and defences, emergency advisory involvement in events of default and unforeseen disruptions, advising termination strategy and contractually regulated dispute resolution (namely, neutral evaluations, contractual adjudication, expert determinations and DAB/DRB tribunal hearings).
• Structuring of global cross-border and domestic corporate transactions including investment funding, mergers, and acquisitions.

In disputes related works, GGCLaw offers a unique brand of specialised care and representation in the following areas:

• International arbitration, DAB/DRB, mediation Leading Counsel and Co-Counsel roles;
• Special Counsel (multi-jurisdictional representation limited to project-led technical and commercial issues); and,
• (Independent) Sole and Party/Chair Arbitrator roles.

It is essential to understand that GGCLaw is a specialist set and acts in essence as a “advocate-solicitor-cum-project-advisor”. It is not your typical full service large firm which means that as a practical matter, GGCLaw is better prepared to be commercially flexible and competitive with the professional fees that it charges, whilst guaranteeing direct and personalized service in terms of the set’s expertise.

GGCLaw will explore different cost models and adopt innovations to promote efficiency, including “teaming arrangements” with client’s resources and (external) Singaporean, and other locally qualified counsel where it is agreed that such collaborations would be beneficial to the case, or project in question. Where necessary, GGCLaw will keep the discretion to seek yours, or your client’s approval to “carve-out” the instructing/supporting solicitors’ role and to instruct external firms of solicitors of our choice and onward recommendation to you or your client.

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Practice Areas

FRONT-END PROJECT ADVISORY WORK

GGCLaw has been working with us on the Tuas Mega Port Project. Given the nature of the Project, and the associated Contract, we regularly encounter difficult and complex legal and contractual conundrums.

Their advice on these various matters has been pivotal to us being able to formulate a commercial and contractual strategy associated with these thorny issues.

Penta-Ocean Construction Company Limited
(Japan, Singapore)

SCOPE OF SERVICES

Contract structuring, negotiations, drafting, and associated advisory work, including project performance controls and supply chain management advice concerning the following types of projects and agreements:

• Commercial Contracting;
• PPP, and Concession-based DBOO(T) Projects;
• Traditional, Turnkey (Design and Build), and EPC/EPC(C/IC) Projects;
• Design and Professional Services (and Consultancy) Agreements;
• Energy (Oil & Gas) Exploration, Production (Offshore), Joint Development, and Production Sharing Projects;
• Subsea and Engineering Support Services;
• Energy (Renewable) Concession and Production Sharing Projects;
• Power Supply and Purchase Arrangements (and Off-take Agreements);
• EPCM Agreements;
• Operation and Maintenance Agreements;
• Plant (Onshore – Process Engineering) Design and Build Projects;
• Civil and Marine Engineering Projects;
• (Seabed) Dredging, Land Reclamation and Environmental Management;
• (Seabed) Submarine Cable Systems;
• Built-Environment (Foreshore Defence and Fortification);
• Built-Environment (Onshore Infrastructure and Utilities);
• Built-Environment (Onshore Ports and Transportation);
• Built-Environment (Onshore Buildings and Structures);
• Built-Environment (Onshore Townships and Industrial Zones).

Over the years I have really come to treasure those lawyers who listen to what clients want.

He’s a technical expert in his field, he has the ability to convince. It is very much like watching a King’s Counsel at work. Of our many war stories over the years and upon reflection, all share the common theme of (Mr Glenn Cheng) digging us out of trouble.

In one phrase to encapsulate him, I’d say he’s really user-friendly.

Clough
(Australia, Indonesia)

BACK-END REPRESENTATION, ADVOCACY AND TRIBUNAL WORK

SCOPE OF SERVICES

• Project feasibility and delivery risk analyses;
• Advice on the evidence, as well as on the merits of claims (and defences to claims);
• Advice on contractual controls and events of non-performance;
• Advice and support on the preparation of claims and associated submissions;
• Advice and support on intra-contractual and (external or independent) alternative dispute resolution;
• Statutory adjudication work;
• Dispute (Adjudication and Review) Board work;
• Independent (Referee or) Determination work;
• (International) Arbitration Counsel work;
• Domestic Litigation Counsel work;
• Independent (International) Arbitrator work, and;
• Emergency (International) Arbitrator work

Mr Glenn George Cheng is a Fellow of the Singapore Institute of Arbitrators (FSIArb) and the Malaysian Institute of Arbitrators (FMIArb). He sits on the panels of Arbitrators and the panels of Emergency Arbitrators of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, and the Asian International Arbitration Centre [f.k.a the Kuala Lumpur Regional Centre for Arbitration]. He also sits on the panels of Arbitrators of the Singapore Chamber of Maritime Arbitration (SCMA), the Dubai International Arbitration Centre (DIAC), and the Japan Commercial Arbitration Association (JCAA); as well as being included in the accredited databases of potential arbitrators with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA).

In his experience with claims and disputes, Mr Cheng appears as Counsel and acts as [instructing] Solicitor as needs require. He also sits as Arbitrator and Emergency Arbitrator in both international and domestic proceedings. As Leading Counsel, Mr Cheng successfully led, advocated, and won for his client all the multiple claims made on behalf of that private sector developer against the sovereign defence authority and armed forces’ state-owned land developer of a South Asian country, plus damages and a full reimbursement award on legal costs, in a complex case of the wrongful termination of both a joint venture and its accompanying concession agreement to execute a PPP/BOT land development project. Also as Leading Counsel, Mr Cheng was appointed to advise the resolution of over 400 claims and disputes which arose during the winding down of a crude oil and petrochemical trading division of the national oil and gas authority of Indonesia. During the COVID-19 pandemic “lockdown” periods internationally, Mr Cheng advised numerous key clients and projects across Italy, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and the UAE.

Why GGCLaw?

WHAT OUR CLIENTS KNOW, AND THINK ABOUT US

MR GLENN GEORGE CHENG

In his experience on global projects, Mr Cheng has acted on PPP projects in Singapore including the Tuaspring (Tuas II) SWRO Desalination Plant, the Kranji Wastewater Reclamation and NEWater Plants, and the Singapore Sports Hub. In other infrastructure projects, he has acted on PPP/DBOO(T) projects across Singapore and the SEA-Asia-Pacific region.

Mr Cheng has a singular industry reputation in civil/marine and blue-water heavy engineering projects, having acted for respective JV head contractors since 2014, and leading sequentially, the project advisory work on each of the Jurong Island Westward Expansion (JIWE), as well as Phase One and Phase Two stages (comprising “Finger 2” and “Finger 3“) EPC (Turnkey) packages on the Tuas Terminal “Mega-Port” project.

The Tuas “Mega-Port” in Singapore is designed to cost (on plan) SGD($)20 billion and will stand as the world’s largest port infrastructure when all (four) Finger piers are completed. Mr Cheng’s tenure on the Tuas “Mega-Port” Project is now approaching its 10th year, which constitutes to date, and by far, the longest uninterrupted tenure of any international (and/or domestic) lawyer advising on that project. As his clients take on new projects in Saudi Arabia and the greater Middle East region, Mr Cheng’s experience is proving reliably invaluable in these new applications. In other traditional procurement platforms he has also advised on BOT / DBOO(T) wharf construction projects in Indonesia, India and Saudi Arabia.

Mr Cheng is further specialised in a range of seabed dredging, foreshore defence and reclamation, and submarine cable trenching, laying and burial projects on which he has advised across Singapore, the (former) Shell-Eastern Pulau Bukom, as well as offshore Malaysia, across North Africa and the Middle East. In energy projects, and specifically in terms of offshore exploration and production, he has acted on multiple oil and gas MODU/rigs new-buildings, RLEC works and oil and gas asset sale and purchase transactions around the world. He has also acted in civil and marine engineering projects on the Upper Zakum Field “artificial refinery islands” project in Abu Dhabi (UAE).

Working with Glenn Cheng is an absolute pleasure. He is obviously a highly skilled lawyer, but more than that, he understands the commercial and political implications associated with a given contractual and legal strategy and can provide tailored advice to take these aspects into consideration. Glenn is extremely personable and a pleasure to work with and is always available to provide high quality and rapid advice at a moment’s notice. 

His professionalism, integrity, and unwavering dedication to our project are truly commendable. Thanks to his legal expertise and guidance, our reclamation project at the Tuas Mega Port continues to be for us at this stage an ongoing success. I wholeheartedly recommend Glenn Cheng and GCC Law to anyone seeking legal counsel in the field of reclamation projects or any other legal matters. He is not just a lawyer; he is a trusted partner in achieving your goals. 

Penta-Ocean / Hyundai / Boskalis Joint-Venture
Tuas Terminal Reclamation, Wharf Construction and Dredging Phase 2 (TTP2) Project
(Japan, S. Korea, The Netherlands, Singapore)

I have been working with Glenn (Cheng) and his team on several matters during the past few years. Our requests have always been very challenging both in terms of time delivery and subject-matter.

We have always received very high-quality results, and the documents produced by Glenn have by far exceeded our expectations.

The distinctive characteristics of the advice that we received from this lawyer are for sure – clarity and reasonableness – two characteristics that are essential for people like us (working not before Tribunal, but) at Project level and on the operative side.

 Maire Tecnimont SpA
(Italy, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore)

Kewee Kho is focused on investments, corporate and financial advisory to institutional and private clients. His work experience over the last 25 years has been across multiple roles involving investment banking, private equity, venture capital, investments, corporate and business development, corporate finance, entrepreneur, and business management responsibilities covering a broad spectrum of industries in the US and Asia-Pacific.

Kewee is independent director at The Private Museum Ltd and SGX-listed Zhongmin Baihui Retail Group Ltd. He was previously a board member of Lee Metal Group Limited, Courts Asia Limited, and MS Holdings Limited.

Kewee has been involved in over 200 SME, MNC, private and public company transactions during his professional career and personal investments, executing capital raising, M&A, private equity, and proprietary investment deals. The sum of all transaction deals executed at this stage of his career is valued in excess of US$2.5 billion.

Kewee is a Fellow of Singapore Institute of Arbitrators, member and Senior Accredited Director of Singapore Institute of Directors. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Indiana University, and Graduate Certificate in International Arbitration Law from National University of Singapore.