Forty years building. Thirty years deciding.

John Rusk has been an arbitrator and mediator of construction disputes in the New York City area since 1993, and has been involved in resolving more than three hundred of them — among the most experienced neutrals in the Northeast.

Alongside that, he has run a construction firm since 1985 — more than forty years as a contractor, owner's representative, and construction manager. That is where the useful part comes from. Construction defects, scheduling, and the money underneath both are not abstractions to him; he has been on the receiving end of every one of them.

The work spans high-end residential apartments, historic properties, brownstones and country houses, high-rise and multi-family buildings, retail and commercial space, medical and imaging facilities, solar and sub-surface construction, and fire and flood damage.

Years of deep involvement in construction disputes have given him a substantial working knowledge of construction law, which he applies alongside counsel rather than in place of it. Working with a client's attorney, he can identify the facts and the legal questions that will actually resolve the matter — productively and practically, without a discovery program that outlasts the project.

He trained in mediation at the Program on Negotiation, part of Harvard Law School, and at the Center for Dispute Resolution, and studied at Carnegie Mellon University. He has served on the faculty of the American Arbitration Association and was an adjunct professor in construction administration at Columbia University from 2007 to 2022. He is the author of On Time and On Budget: A Home Renovation Survival Guide.