Mark St. Cyr (he/him/his) is a partner in the Construction & Infrastructure Groups at Cassels, where he provides bespoke solutions and practical legal advice to clients at any stage of any construction project. From initial concept, through design, procurement, and construction Mark advises clients on how to navigate and redistribute project risks.
With Mark’s broad drafting, negotiating, and solutions-driven experience, he has had the privilege of representing clients on a wide variety of projects across nearly every industry, throughout Ontario, the rest of Canada, and several other parts of the world. Mark’s practice includes both “front-end” project structure, delivery, and transaction advice, as well as “back-end” dispute management.
On the front-end, Mark advises clients on project structure, procurement, and project delivery models, identifying the best contractual model to suit their project. Recognizing the complex arrangements that are sometimes necessary to deliver large-scale infrastructure, Mark has the proven ability to turn complexity into concise and straightforward solutions. In addition, he has extensive experience drafting and negotiating all forms of agreements one might find on a construction project, as well as new, innovative, and complex contracts such as alternative financing (P3/PPP), alliancing and integrated project delivery (IPD), progressive delivery models (design-build and construction management), “design-assist,” and “bridging” agreements.
In addition to providing advice over the life of his clients’ projects, Mark also helps clients navigate the “back-end” of projects when disputes arise. As a solutions strategist, Mark’s approach to dispute resolution is to assess the merits of the dispute and then collaborate with his client to determine the best go-forward strategy given the strengths and limits of his client’s position as well as their commercial needs. This approach has kept Mark in high-demand to advise both claimants and defendants in a variety of construction-related matters, including construction lien actions, bidding and tendering disputes, bond actions, breach of trust claims, and delay and deficiency claims. Mark’s approach to disputes is to resolutely advance the position of his clients to set up success at trial, while also identifying opportunities for a commercially sensible early resolution.
Recent representative work:
- Advising the project sponsors on the procurement, design, construction, and financing of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) 1Door4Care Integrated Treatment Centre project under the public-private-partnership (P3) model, including negotiating and drafting the procurement documents, project agreement, and early works agreement
- Advising on and developing a bespoke suite of agreements for the multi-party funding, development, and construction of Canada Games Park in the Niagara Region
- Ongoing mandates for post-secondary institutions, municipalities, regional governments, boards of education, contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers to update their current contracts to keep pace with market conditions, address legislative changes (e.g., Construction Act updates), manage global phenomena (e.g., COVID-19 and supply-side risks), and to redistribute risk based on the latest jurisprudence.
Prior to becoming a lawyer, Mark was a crime analyst with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, based in North Vancouver, British Columbia.
