The New Master
Chris Dancaster was born in 1941 and educated at City of London School and the School of Navigation of the University of Southampton. He spent 3½ years at sea with Shaw Savill and Albion. During that period he twice circumnavigated the globe east visiting Australia and New Zealand and what for those days were exotic places such as Ceylon and Peru. He also made six trips to New Zealand and back taking out general cargo of which uncrated motor cars made up a large part. The return voyage cargoes were principally frozen lamb, chilled beef and some dry cargo such as bales of wool. Four of those voyages were on SS Gothic which the older amongst you may remember served as the Royal Yacht for the Queen’s Commonwealth Tour of 1953. She had however been converted back to a passenger/cargo vessel carrying 80 First Class passengers by the time Chris joined her. In those days the only practical way for anyone to get to New Zealand was a 28 day voyage! His main impression of that time is the unrelenting boredom of a 14 day crossing of the Pacific Ocean six times a year which resulted in his coming ashore in 1962. Chris remains a keen member of his Old Cadets Association and keeps in contact with many of his fellow cadets of 50 years ago.
In 1962 Chris joined a firm of quantity surveyors and became a Chartered Surveyor in 1969. He then spent some time with Milton Keynes Development Corporation and Northamptonshire County Council before returning to private practice where he spent 20 years, latterly specialising in the development field and was involved in the construction of many substantial office and residential developments.
As a Quantity Surveyor Chris became very much involved in the contractual side of construction and whilst being fortunate in that disputes on the projects he was involved with never went beyond his desk he became fascinated by the whole spectrum of dispute resolution and became a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in 1988. He became a Registered Arbitrator in 1993 and a Chartered Arbitrator when that accolade became available in 1999.
Chris has acted as a dispute resolver virtually full time since 1991 initially as Arbitrator and latterly more and more as Adjudicator having dealt with well in excess of 400 construction disputes.
He has served on the Council of the CIArb, is a past Chairman of the Dispute Resolution Faculty of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, was Founding Chairman of Construction Arbrix and is a Past President of the Society of Construction Arbitrators. He served on the Department of Trade and Industry Sounding Board in the consultation on the Construction Act in 2006/7.
Chris has been a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Arbitrators since 1990. He has chaired the Membership and Finance Committees and for a period chaired the Company’s Second Charitable Trust. He remains a Trustee of the now amalgamated Trusts.
Chris is married to Ursula who is now retired as a schoolteacher but remains very much involved as a governor of her school. She is also very involved in fund raising for the local Hospice. Chris and Ursula live in Milton Keynes and have two daughters and four grandchildren equally split between the UK and Australia.
On the odd occasion when work and family commitments allow, Chris plays golf and he and Ursula enjoy fell walking and travel. They visit Australia regularly and over the past few years have been making an effort to visit as many of the major European cities as they can.