Katarina Obradović Baklaja

Katarina is attorney at law with over twenty years of professional experience, specialised for Construction and Real Estate law and Dispute resolution. She is advising clients in numerous projects in areas of infrastructure, Real Estate, energy law and with focus on projects based on different types of FIDIC General Conditions of Contracts.

Katarina is a member of the FIDIC Contract Committee Task Group TG4– since 2024. responsible for preparing a Guide for the consultancy Agreements (FIDIC White Book  Model Services Agreement, Model Subcontractors Agreements and JV Agreement).

In project development phase, she has valuable experience in implementation of legal and contractual requirements, from creation of legal strategies to negotiating FIDIC based contracts and other complex engineering and construction contracts, management of legal issues during the implementation of the projects and representation of the clients in international DAB, mediation or arbitration proceedings and acting as an adjudicator/DAB member. Knowledge and experience in national jurisdictions and local laws in the Balkan region combined with international know-how and understanding of international models of construction contracts qualified Katarina for various expert positions on projects in the region.

Since 2017. she is appointed to National PRO List of experts of ACES – Association of consulting engineers of Serbia -National FIDIC Association in two expert categories:List PRO 2- recommended lawyers for the field and List PRO 3 – recommended Adjudicators for DAB -Dispute Adjudication Boards.

Since December 2023 she is a member of Managing board of ACES (Asociation of consuling Engeeners of Serbia). She is an active member of ACES Task group responsible for official translations of FIDIC books to Serbian and ACES certified trainer on FIDIC trainings organized by ACES. She is an active member of ACES Task group and and engaged as a trainer on local FIDIC trainings organized by ACES.

Katarina holds a position of President of Construction Dispute Resolution Center (CDRC),a permanent institution for the administration of alternative construction dispute resolution proceedings formed under ACES (Association of consulting engineers Serbia).

As part of our office arbitration team, she represents clients in international arbitrations under ICC rules, VIAC rules and BAC rules.She focuses on construction arbitration and construction ADR procedures - DAB/DAAB. She spent first part of professional career in judiciary, acted for 9 years as a judge within that period. In her adjudication and arbitration practice she successfully implements years of judicial experience in areas of proceedings guidance, presentation and evaluation of evidence and decision writing.

She has full working capacity in English.