Law: adjudication mid-construction with the CA as conduit

You are the Contract Administrator on a £6 million extension to a regional hospital in the West Midlands procured under a JCT Standard Building Contract 2024 with Quantities. The Employer is the NHS Trust. Construction has reached month nine of an eighteen month programme. The architect's contract administration role is shared across your team but you are the named CA on the contract. On a Friday at 17:00, the contractor's solicitors serve a Notice of Adjudication on the Trust by email and by hand at the Trust's registered office, claiming £1.2 million in respect of (i) ten variations valued under clause 5 which the contractor says have been undervalued, (ii) £420,000 of loss and expense for late information, all of which they say relates to your AIs and RFIs over the preceding four months, and (iii) £180,000 for disruption to the works arising from a piecemeal AI sequence. The Notice nominates an adjudicator under the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors panel. The contract is silent on the nominating body and adopts the contractually agreed timetable in JCT SBC 2024 article 7. On the following Tuesday morning, the Referral Notice arrives with appendices running to 480 pages including a Delay Expert's report. The Response is due in seven days. The Trust's facilities director is on annual leave for the next ten days and is uncontactable. The Trust's in-house legal team is small and inexperienced in TCC work. The Trust has called you and asked you to "handle the adjudication" on their behalf.