Elizabeth Skelly

Elizabeth’s experience includes:

• Department of Defence, Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group: Elizabeth has provided commercial and legal advice to the Commonwealth, and in particularly to the Department of Defence, on many major acquisition and sustainment projects, including air, maritime, land, communications and joint projects. Most recently, Elizabeth has advised on the Joint Strike Fighter Program and the Air to Air Refuelling Program.
  Elizabeth has assisted Defence in resolving major contractual disputes within the relevant law and policy framework. This includes the recovery of liquidated damages and other performance remedies, schedule rebaselining, warranty claims, assessing extension of time claims and variation claims, and resolving technical issues with capability.

• Commonwealth and State government: Elizabeth has advised the Commonwealth and State governments on commercial and contractual matters and is highly experienced in:
  • Structuring and drafting contracts, licences, MOUs and inter-agency agreements, deeds, funding agreements;
  • Conducting market research and multi-phased procurement processes both in sole source and competitive tendering environments;
  • Developing documentation for collaborative industry engagement processes, and offer definition and improvement processes;
  • Assessing and structuring contractual allocation of risk and liability; and
  • Evaluating tender responses, assessing non-compliance statements, preparing negotiation positions and conducting negotiations.
• Public and private sector clients: Elizabeth has advised on various IT matters in each of the key areas of her expertise discussed above, including on cloud and data room arrangements, software licences, hardware and software support/maintenance agreements, and system integrator contracts; and
• Intellectual property: Elizabeth advises on complex IP arrangements (including IP ownership, IP rights and limitations, and IP planning and management) for major projects. She advises on the granting of IP rights and the scope of IP licences under contract provisions, including issues associated with software, technical documentation and third party rights.