Working from his home in 1976 to start what became global claims consultant and project management giant Hill International Inc., Irvin E. Richter boosted revenue by offering seminars on construction disputes. But one seminar in the early 1980s led to the creation of a concept that became central to Hill’s approach to construction dispute resolution and a staple of industry contract language.

在里奇特（Richter）的演讲之后，他的承包商与他联系，他说他失去了仲裁决定，因为他正在建造的休斯顿购物中心的所有者不相信屋顶泄漏是由设计缺陷造成的，而是由于施工错误而引起的。里奇特帮助承包商对该决定提出上诉，并很快收到了所有者的消息。双方都想雇用他解决索赔。If the two sides paid him equally, he said he’d settle the dispute as an impartial party, “and thus was born the concept of the ‘project neutral,’” Hill’s chairman emeritus recalled in his Nov. 1 acceptance speech for ENR MidAtlantic’s 2016 Legacy Award.

最终，飓风吹过购物中心的屋顶，保险公司为新屋顶支付了费用。然而，随着美国建筑师学会开始将其纳入10或15年前的标准合同文件，该项目中立概念被困并被广泛使用。

与调解在进行演示后分开的调解不同，在项目中性案件中，两方保留在同一房间中。“I’ll go out on a limb saying I believe Hill International, under Irv’s leadership, was the first one to come up with that idea, at least in the U.S., “ says James G. Zack, executive director for the Navigant Construction Forum. Hill’s project management services were also launched in the early 1980s. As Richter says he told clients: “We already know everything that can go wrong, so if you hire us to manage the project from the beginning, we can stop those things from going wrong.”

Bruce D’Agostino, president and CEO of the Construction Management Association of America, says Hill was one of the first firms to perform constructibility reviews to determine design completeness during predesign and preconstruction phases. “He was a pioneer for sure,” D’Agostino notes.

希尔在12月20日在新闻稿中宣布，已签订了一项确定的股票购买协议，将其建筑索赔业务出售给BridgePoint Development Capital，这是国际私募股权集团Bridgepoint的一部分。根据新闻稿，预计这笔1.47亿美元的全现金交易预计将在大约60天内结束。

The construction claims group reported $163.1 million in revenue for the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, representing 26.3% of Hill's consolidated consulting fee revenue during that period, according to the press release. The claims group provides claims consulting, management consulting, litigation support, expert witness testimony, cost and damages assessment, delay and disruption analysis, adjudication, lender advisory, risk management, forensic accounting, fraud investigation, project neutral and international arbitration services.

“我们的施工索赔组原布鲁里溃疡siness that began Hill more than four decades ago,” David L. Richter, Hill's current chief executive officer and the son of Irv Richter, said in a statement. “We will miss our friends and colleagues in that business but we know that each of us will be in a better position to grow our two distinct businesses as independent and separate companies.

“This transaction transforms Hill into a pure-play project management firm with a significantly stronger balance sheet.”

The elder Richter cut his teeth on disputes and claims in the early 1970s working for a firm that installed gymnasium floors. He constantly handled issues over floors that buckled if they were not installed or maintained correctly. Eventually, he worked for a construction scheduling firm, where he was asked to write a claim his first day. A contractor was looking for more money after a project ran into delays. There was no manual for claim writing so Richter included the three issues crucial to any lawsuit: liability, causation and damages. He used scheduling to show what caused the delays, and how the delays, in turn, caused damages.

Armed with construction and engineering dictionaries, he wrote claims in lay language and drew diagrams of complicated systems such as flocculation tanks so that mediators, arbiters, judges and jurors could comprehend the dispute. Richter says his wife reviewed his work because “if she couldn’t understand the claim, I had to rewrite it.”

随着对其服务的需求增长,里希特的雇工r boosted Richter’s hourly billing rate. But Richter, knowing that he didn’t have the credentials to testify in court, enrolled in Rutgers University Law School at night. After one semester, his employer said he would fire him if he didn’t quit school because he was too valuable. Richter took a leave of absence from school—but he also asked a friend for $60,000 to help start their own construction claims business. Eventually, he quit his job and commandeered his son’s bedroom for an office and managed to graduate from law school shortly after Hill International officially launched.

Today, the Philadelphia-based firm’s business is 80% project management, with 76% of its revenue outside the U.S. The firm provides program management, construction management and other consulting services in building, transportation, environmental, energy and industrial sectors.

Hill在2015年的收入中获得了72060万美元的收入，在ENR 2016年排名前100名的建筑管理公司中排名第9新利luck。它在全球100多个办公室中拥有约4,500名员工，并从事重要项目，例如迪拜的频道隧道以及棕榈和世界群岛。18luck官网该公司在运河的猛mm象扩建期间向巴拿马运河管理局的监察长提供了风险评估和建筑保证服务。

“What amazes me about his mark is his global experience,” D’Agostino says. “There was no place he was unwilling to go to build projects. It took guts when you think about what the world was like when they were expanding globally.”

Richter, 72, served as CEO from 1976 to 2014, during which time he took the firm public. He was chairman until August 2016. Being succeeded as CEO by his son was something the elder Richter called “every father’s dream who starts a business.” The younger Richter says his father is “hands-on without being a micromanager.”

IRV Richter在此过程中指导了其他企业家。他开始在宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院的商学院讲授客座，而他的儿子就读了这所学校，并且已经有十年了。里奇（Richter）年长的最著名的学生是埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）。

里奇特（Richter）撰写或合着了几本关于建筑主张和法律的书籍，包括建筑法和索赔手册1982年 - 扎克（Zack）表示，多年来，该行业被广泛使用。他也是前CMAA国家主席，并创立了ACE Mentor计划的坎登（Camden），新泽西州卡姆登（Camden）。该小组和其他许多人的贡献都引用了他。

里奇特仍然每天发出约200封电子邮件，但他说他“对我的工作很满意，这很少。”他说，如果他渴望重新开始做生意，“我知道如何刮擦它。”