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John Sisk & Son’s head of legal and risk Kate Maton reports that the company’s cross-jurisdictional legal team has ‘recently implemented considerable improvements in the company’s approach to risk awareness and contract reviews’. Consequently, the team is now ‘much more actively involved in all contracts and providing a corporate overview to all business units’ as part of an overall greater engagement with the business as a whole. Possibly the most eye-catching contract the firm landed in recent months came with the December 2017 announcement that John Sisk & Son would construct the €233m Center Parcs Longford Forest resort in County Longford. The legal team, of course, led the Sisk side of the negotiation for this, and Maton also mentions the team has had involvement in a broad spectrum of projects in other sectors including residential, commercial and industrial in addition to this marquee project. Maton is keen to keep individual team members’ work-life balance in mind in order to foster a positive working environment, and expects the team to think outside the box: ‘My team needs to be dynamic and innovative, as we are a relatively small team for a billion euro turnover company. We do this by never looking strictly at the law but always considering the business impact of any course of action’. She also highlights that solicitor Suzanne Farrell has been at the heart of all the team’s recent success, and her consistently excellent work has been a major factor in all it has achieved.