👋 Intro
I dug into a July 2025 TCC decision about subsea cable burial on the Viking Link project.
It is packed with lessons on expert evidence and how judges weigh granular analysis against broad assertions.
Lets get into it.
Digest — Pharos Offshore Group Ltd v Keynvor Morlift Ltd [2025] EWHC 1764 (TCC)
The Case
Pharos Offshore hired out its subsea trenching spread and crew to KML to bury sections of the Viking Link electricity cable under the seabed.
Things did not go smoothly. Bad weather, steep seabed slopes near shore, and stoppages with the equipment meant delays and extra costs. Each side blamed the other.
To cut through the finger-pointing, the court heard from two types of experts:
Marine trenching/offshore operations experts, who explained how the jet trencher should have performed in the conditions.
Delay and quantum experts, who analysed daily records to show what caused downtime and who should bear the financial hit.
In simple terms, the fight was over this: were the delays down to natural conditions and equipment limits (Pharos’s view), or were they the result of under-performance and poor management by Pharos (KML’s view)?
The Issue
The central dispute was whether Pharos should be paid for time beyond the “10 days” in the purchase order.
KML said no — performance was too slow.
Pharos said the 10 days was only an indicative programme, and delays were caused by conditions outside its control.
The Decision
Mr Justice Constable found:
The “10 days” in the purchase order was an indicative programme, not a hard cap.
Pharos could charge beyond 10 days, provided it carried out the work with reasonable care and within a reasonable time.
The judge preferred the more granular expert analysis of downtime, rejecting broad, high-level assertions.
KML’s attempt to shift weather risk onto Pharos by editing the purchase order failed — the court treated it as an inadvertent drafting change.
How the Experts Differed
KML’s expert argued broadly that the trencher should have achieved faster burial rates and that downtime was excessive.
His approach relied more on general experience and expectation than on reconstruction of the actual sequence.
Pharos’s expert built a forensic timeline. He went through daily vessel logs, weather data, and survey reports to show hour by hour what limited progress.
He quantified how seabed slope, hose management, and weather windows affected the work.
Why One Side Won
The court leaned toward Pharos’s evidence because it was detailed, traceable, and document-based.
Judges prefer an evidential trail they can follow without specialist knowledge.
KML’s expert’s points were not dismissed outright, but they lacked the granularity to outweigh Pharos’s day-by-day causation map.
Why It Matters for Experts
The case shows that credibility does not come from a CV alone.
It comes from linking every opinion back to a document, a number, or a record the judge can follow.
Granular analysis beats broad assertions every time.
👉 Takeaway for experts: Build your report like a timeline. If a judge can trace it step by step without you in the room, they’ll trust it.“more granular and particularised.”
That’s a reminder: credibility lies in the evidence trail, not the CV.
🛠 Career Corner (Mini)
Next time you prepare a report, try reading it aloud to yourself.
If a section feels clunky or overcomplicated, the judge will probably think the same.
Smooth spoken flow often signals written clarity.
👋 Closing
That’s it for this week.
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Ciao.