PRACTICE OVERVIEW

Adjunct Professor Kim Lovegrove DLitt (honoris causa), MSE, RML, is an Australasian construction lawyer and law reform adviser with a career approaching forty years. He is a barrister at FortyEight Shortland in Auckland, New Zealand, and is the founder of Lovegrove & Cotton Construction & Planning Lawyers, originally established as Lovegrove Solicitors in 1993.

He was the project director of the team responsible for the National Model Building Act, a reform blueprint that influenced legislative modernisation in several Australian jurisdictions. He served as principal legal adviser to the Victorian Government on the development and implementation of the Building Act 1993.

His senior public sector roles include Assistant Director of Building Control in Victoria and Deputy Executive Director of the Australian Building Codes Board. He has chaired the Building Practitioners Board in Victoria and served as president of professional institutes in Australia and New Zealand. He is admitted to legal practice in New Zealand and Australia, where he continues to advise at senior levels.

Internationally, Professor Lovegrove has served as a senior law reform consultant to the World Bank, with advisory engagements in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Mumbai, New Delhi, Malawi and Malaysia. He has participated in government law reform think tanks convened by the Japanese Government in Tokyo, contributing guidance on statutory design and regulatory architecture.

He is Chairman of the International Building Quality Centre. His academic appointments include Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra and Southern Cross University, Conjoint Professor at Western Sydney University School of Law, a past conjoint professor at the University of Newcastle and Visiting Professor at RMIT University.

His honours include the Royal Medal of the Lion and the Order of the Star of Ethiopia for humanitarian contributions. He has also served as Honorary Consul for Ethiopia in Victoria, Australia. He has authored or co-authored more than fifteen books on building law related matters.

In the early 1990s, he acted as an instructing officer to Parliamentary Counsel in relation to the National Model Building Act, where proportionate liability formed part of a broader framework for modernising building regulation and professional accountability. In 1993, he again acted as instructing officer to Parliamentary Counsel in connection with the Victorian Building Act, contributing to the statutory architecture through which elements of that reform agenda were given legislative expression.

He has provided advisory input on proportionate liability reform in other jurisdictions. In New South Wales, he acted as an adviser to government in 1997 during the policy development phase that preceded the adoption of proportionate liability legislation. In New Zealand, he acted as an adviser to government in 2025 on reforms associated with the transition from joint and several liability to a proportionate liability framework.

AREAS OF PRACTICE

• Construction and building law

• Building regulation and compliance

• Building law reform and statutory design

• Proportionate liability

• Planning law

• Regulation of building practitioners