Randy Hafer is Chair of the firm's Litigation Department. He focuses his practice on issues related to the construction industry. Mr. Hafer has been involved in matters all over the United States on a wide variety of construction projects, including mass transit systems, tunnels, airports, power plants, waste water treatment plants, bridges and highways, hospitals, office buildings, sports arenas, resort condominiums, universities and schools, manufacturing and processing facilities, and military facilities. Some of his most prominent projects include the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, aka "The Big Dig," the Boston Harbor Project and the Narragansett Bay CSO project—all for the public owners, as well as the Tren Urbano mass transit project in Puerto Rico for the design-build-operate-maintain contractor.

Mr. Hafer focuses much of his practice on the prevention of construction related disputes through effective risk allocation and management and contract drafting. Mr. Hafer works as a member of the owner’s project management team at the “front end” of projects to achieve these goals.

Mr. Hafer also works directly with construction project participants to avoid disputes and effectively and efficiently resolve, on a “real-time” basis, those disputes that cannot be avoided. He is well-versed and experienced in negotiation, mediation, arbitration, dispute review boards and other forms of construction ADR. Mr. Hafer has also helped create and has successfully implemented customized dispute resolution processes to fit the particular needs of a project when other more traditional ADR procedures are not working.

In addition to extensive construction ADR experience, Mr. Hafer has presented construction cases to judges, juries in a number of state and federal courts across the country, and to administrative boards of federal, state and local government agencies. Mr. Hafer also has extensive appellate experience. He has argued cases before the North Carolina, Wisconsin and Florida courts of appeals, and he is a member of the federal courts of appeal for the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits.

Claims avoidance and education are an important part of Mr. Hafer’s practice. He is a frequent speaker at the Construction Superconference and has spoken at the American Bar Association Forum Committee on the Construction Industry, the American Underground Construction Association, the Design Build Institute of America, and other industry related programs.

Mr. Hafer received a congressional appointment to the United States Naval Academy in 1968, where he studied engineering and systems analysis for three years. Between college and law school, he worked as a police officer and a criminal investigator for the Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia.

Mr. Hafer was listed in the 2009 and 2010 editions of Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business for Construction Law and he was listed as #1 in the 2011 edition. He was also listed in the 2009 and 2011 editions of Legal 500 US for Real Estate and Construction Law. He has been recognized by other practicing attorneys as one of the 2011 and 2012 Best Lawyers in America® in the field of Construction Law. He was listed in The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers for 2009 and 2011 and The International Who's Who of Construction Lawyers in 2010. He is a Fellow of The American College of Construction Lawyers.  Mr. Hafer was named a Georgia "Super Lawyer" in the areas of Construction Litigation and Alternative Dispute Resolution in 2009, again for Construction Litigation in 2010 and 2011 and a Top 100 Georgia "Super Lawyer" in 2011 by SuperLawyers magazine. Mr. Hafer is AV^® rated by Martindale-Hubbell.*

*CV, BV, and AV are registered certification marks of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc., used in accordance with the Martindale-Hubbell certification procedure's standards and policies.