Division 00 and 01 responsibility

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Author Message David Axt, AIA, CCS, CSI Senior Member Username: david_axt Post Number: 1110 Registered: 03-2002 Posted on Thursday, September 02, 2010 - 12:37 pm:    Theoretically, Division 00 – Procurement and Contracting Requirements is the owner’s responsibility to prepare and Division 01 – General Requirements is the architect’s responsibility to prepare. However, in the real world, some owners ask my firm to prepare many of the Division 00 documents. Some owners will give us prepared Division 01 section to insert in the project manual. I seems like we are doing more of the owner's job and owner is doing more of our job. I am concerned that there might be increased liability risk on our part. What do you think about this practice? Marc C Chavez Senior Member Username: mchavez Post Number: 388 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Thursday, September 02, 2010 - 12:48 pm:    what does the contract say? are you being compensated for it? what did your insurance people say when they read the contract - did they see a copy prior to signing? Mine ALWAYS do and if it is incrreasing our exposure (and It may be) they let me know. M (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Thursday, September 02, 2010 - 01:30 pm:    Owners come in varying degrees of sophistication. They do not always know what falls under their realm of responsibility. Those that do understand their responsibilities, still don’t necessarily know the best way to go about it. I know school districts that repeatedly throw in ancient boilerplates. I may be totally wrong, but I have always considered all Division 00 items to be the Owner’s full responsibility. If the owner wants to pay the architect to create or provide those documents, the architect may chose to do it. Regardless of who creates or provides those documents, they are still the owner’s documents. The owner needs to read them, modify them as desired, completely agree with them, sign off on them, and assume full responsibility for them. Regarding Division 01, it doesn’t always bother me if owners want to do my job for me. The problem is, owners do not always understand what Division 01 is intended to be. Often, owners are just trying to make sure that the project runs the way they want it with respect to themselves. Many of the items they want included in Division 01are really items that should have been included in their own General Conditions document. Owners simply get confused as to the General Conditions that outline owner requirements of the contractor verses Division 01 that outlines the architect’s requirements of the contractor. Owners do have legitimate reasons to want some control over some aspects of Division 01. They may want to make sure that certain quality assurance and quality control procedures are used. They may want to see specific items in project schedules. They may want a particular web-based program to be used for contract administration. But I always prefer that they simply put those requirements into a project standard instead of arresting control over our Division 01. Too often, Owners fail to understand everything that architects must specify in order to properly ensure the quality of the construction of the project. Even when owners give me Division 01 specs, I prefer to treat them like an owner’s standard rather than using them outright. Unless the owner is firmly against it, I always create my own Division 01, and just modify it as needed to comply with their Division 01. That way, the owner gets everything they wanted, but the architect gets what they need as well. Mark Gilligan SE, Senior Member Username: mark_gilligan Post Number: 304 Registered: 10-2007 Posted on Thursday, September 02, 2010 - 01:45 pm:    A design professional assists his client and at times acts as his agent. The narrow defining of scope of services has contributed to the reduced influence of architects with many owners. We make our profit by controlling our risks so that they are less than what others perceive them to be. If you have the skills and capability to manage the risks associated with a given activity and the fee is appropriate for the risk then there should be no problem with doing the work. Think of this as an opportunity to develop a closer relationship with your client. Anne Whitacre, FCSI CCS Senior Member Username: awhitacre Post Number: 999 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Thursday, September 02, 2010 - 02:42 pm:    Don't forget that many owners have construction contracts (and theoretically general conditions) that we never see. I will often advise the owner regarding what I think may be necessary for their best use, and I do like to review the bid forms and other construction requirements but many private clients simply don't make those documents available, and even if they do, we have no assurance that the documents won't change a day before the job goes to bid. I consider Division 1 docs always to be an extra service and provide separate pricing for them. If asked, I will provide a "basic package"for Division 00 -- bid form, invitation to bid, a memo regarding bonds, and a basic addendum form -- because as said above, many owners really are out of their depth regarding construction. Moreover, their attornies are not always construction savvy, either, and it helps for me to provide a formwork for them. And, finally. Even if the owner has their own division 01, I always provide sections tailored to the architectural client that protect their interests. I used to "conform" the Division 01 with the 00 documents, but now I take the tactic that the Architect needs as much protection from the Owner and Contractor as possible regarding contract administration. (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Thursday, September 02, 2010 - 06:39 pm:    If you don't prepare Division 01, what do you do about the dozens (hundreds?) of references to specific Division 01 sections which occur throughout the other Divisions? I have this problem right now, doing some conversions for a mechanical engineer. There are a zillion references to Section "Administrative Requirements", "Product Requirements" etc. in the divisions I am working with. David E Lorenzini Senior Member Username: deloren Post Number: 107 Registered: 04-2000 Posted on Thursday, September 02, 2010 - 07:43 pm:    I had the same problem as Unregistered Guest where I received a set of Division 01 sections from the CM at the last minute. My solution was to require them to include their sections in Division 00 under a special 00 title (that I can't remember). Then I kept all my Division 01 Sections. Where there was an overlap with the CM, I edited my section to just show a refernce to the CM's equivalent section. Several of my Division 01 sections were left untouched, and there was no extra work revising the sections in the other Divisions to point to the new CM section numbers. Sometimes you have to get creative, if you can get away with it. David Lorenzini, FCSI, CCS Architectural Resources Co. Tom Good, Architect, RA, CDT, SCIP, LEED AP Senior Member Username: tom_good Post Number: 13 Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Sunday, February 20, 2011 - 03:53 am:    I am a spec consultant for Architects, and if i can even get their Owner to Read Article 11 of AIA A 201, much less include the minimum limits of Contractor's liability in the Project Manual some how, I am very lucky. So I end up doing OO and 01 on bid projects. CM's do the procurement portions of 00 on CMc jobs.