Ralph Liebing, RA, CSI, CDT
Senior Member
Username: rliebing
Post Number: 1261
Registered: 02-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - 09:41 am: |    |
110831
YOUR INDULGENCE, PLEASE
by Ralph Liebing, RA, CSI, CDT, Cincinnati, OH
Your indulgence please while we recite the current situation.
At the present time construction projects involve at least two major contracts. The owner is contractually connected to the design professional, who designs the project; and separately to the contractor who will build the project.
Under the first, two functional documents are involved, in addition to the basic Agreement-- these, of course are the drawings and the specifications. By tradition, this combine of documents has provided the information needed, in basic form, to build the specific project as designed for and approved by the owner.
Also, by tradition, the contractor is responsible for transmitting back to the owner via the design professional, additional drawings and documents in the form of shop drawings, and other submittals. Years ago these were considered to be verification of what was being provided for the project. Today, though they are considered evidence that the contractor understands the design concept and what is to be done to accomplish its construction. The change in the basis of consideration is primarily one of legal intent.
Submittals, generally, are under attack. Contractors view them as needless nuisances of no particular value except to increase project cost. Professionals see them as additional work to be reviewed largely without added compensation, and added items of liability exposure if the professional is not extremely careful in how the review is conducted and how return comments are worded. Courts hold, quite often, that reviewed and particularly “approved” documents [use of the words “reviewed” and “approved” have vacillated for several years, in regard to what, exactly, the professional role would be] make the professional liable-- the disclaimer statements and stamps notwithstanding! So for the moment let’s hold that NO submittals are to be required.
We also are seeing evidence that the owners view specifications as added cost items of little or marginal value, and hence they seek to reduce or even eliminate them. Owners fully know the massive changes in drawing production attributable to the use of CAD production methodology. Other than use of master specifications on a repetitive basis, streamlined wording and computerized word processing, there is little new or revolutionary in specification writing and production. So owners are saying, more and more, "Just use our standards and forget the specifications". [This is increasingly the attitude in many larger corporations]. Only problem-- those standards are often out of date [fewer and fewer owners still maintain a central engineering function to update standards, etc.]. In addition, without the formal envelope in which specifications operate there is no enforcement authority within owners’ standards [other than contractual language] and nothing that deals the function of doing or how to do things. Standards deal primarily with what will be used, i.e., what material, system, or program.
So now if all of this is packaged and put in place, there may be a design concept that is turned over to the contractor for execution. There will be no system of check and balances in the project work, and with more and more owners opting out of contract administration [as a service of their design professional] there is only minimal observation of the construction in progress. This directly impugns the traditional concept of the two contracts whereby the professional is set out as the policing agency to ensure that contractor perform properly [i.e., as required by the documents] and will produce what the owner expects and is obligated to pay for.
Should there be a change from the traditional contract documents—Agreement, Drawings and Specifications—to merely Agreement and Drawings? Fraught with danger and problems, and worst, in the eyes of professionals and their specifications writers—minimization, but little if any reduction in liability. Even the more modern “plans and specs” contracts of professionals would be further reduced, but still will maintain the perceived lines of liability and need to expend money to defend against lawsuits, improperly brought. Can we be far from producing a preliminary rendering that is then given over to the contractor for execution? That should produce some VERY INTERESTING projects! Projects of virtually unknown scope, little detail, no explicit intent or content, and wholly produced as the contractor desires, pleases, or deems proper. The owner is left to “buying a pig in a poke” [to use an old adage] which entails merely accepting and paying for “whatever” is turned over as “finished project”. |
4specs.com Home Page