Contractor 'Code of Conduct' Specific...

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Author Message (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - 01:16 pm:    I have an Owner that wants to create what they are calling, a "Code of Conduct" specification section for the contractor. It would entail "Community Outreach" issues and address/resolve concerns and provide information about construction activities. These may involve: regular updates/community meetings, a construction hotline, appropriate signage, communication with elected officials, coordination of work schedules, affected business area cleaning/waste management, noise mitigation, complaints response procedures, participating in marketing activities, coordination with community events, etc. The idea is to have all this information in one specification that could also be used to present to the public the impacts and proactive response of the owner to address these issues. Has anyone developed one of these? If so, what MF # did you assign it? Other thoughts? Ronald L. Geren, AIA, CSI, CCS, CCCA, SCIP Senior Member Username: specman Post Number: 890 Registered: 03-2003 Posted on Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - 01:33 pm:    I would place it somewhere under 01 35 00 "Special Procedures." Ron Geren, AIA, CSI, CCS, CCCA, SCIP www.specsandcodes.com Scott Mize Senior Member Username: scott_mize_ccs_csi Post Number: 40 Registered: 02-2009 Posted on Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - 02:29 pm:    Or you could suggest to your Owner that these requirements might be more appopriately placed in the General Conditions of the Contract for Construction or as a separate exhibit to the Contract/Agreement itself. Specifications are supposed to be 'clear, concise, complete and correct' and it is difficult to 'nail down' these kinds of requirements and decide where they should be located in the project manual. (For example, I was forever plagued by owners and project managers insisting that the specifications make the contractor responsible for 'coordination', without defining exactly what those responsibilities were.) If your owner *has* a very specific list of tasks and procedures and only needs you to put it in the same format as the project manual, great! Otherwise, it sounds like he's asking you to do a lot of research and play 'twenty questions' with him over something that doesn't really require your technical expertise (and time!) Steven Bruneel, AIA, CSI-CDT, LEED-AP Senior Member Username: redseca2 Post Number: 256 Registered: 12-2006 Posted on Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - 05:20 pm:    We have done all that and more for big projects in dense areas with a "NIMBY" attitude, including comping an entire block of households to a resort stay in Napa/Sonoma during a non-stop mat slab concrete pour and weekly house cleaning for the duration of construction. But it is the Owner who really needs to take the lead because the Contractor will only be around until construction is complete but they will have the building, and those neighbors "forever". J. Peter Jordan (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - 06:22 pm:    I have done this on a church/school project (if I am remembering correctly). There was a laundry list of Owner concerns about Contractor conduct during construction primarily related to security of occupants. Some of them had already been addressed, but the Owner wanted it put in verbatim. As long as they are related to specific actions the Owner wants the Contractor to do or not do, I think they can be enforced. If they drift off into the realm of "apple hood and mother pie" attitudes, I would suggest it is meaningless. Where these mainly deal with security, I put them in a section in the 01 50 00 series. But they could be special procedures or addressed in sections dealing with occupancy or management and coordination. Wayne Yancey Senior Member Username: wayne_yancey Post Number: 381 Registered: 01-2008 Posted on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - 12:19 pm:    In TI work the Owner or Landlord may have their own manual for such stuff. For example, "Contractor Rules and Regulations for Subtenants" or "Landlord's Construction Manual". Both of these are names of real documents from two clients. Both may be bound into the project manual or issued under separate cover. I usually use Section 013513 - Special Project Procedures for Leased Space Facilities but include one of the above by reference. Change to suite project. Some topics may be work restrictions that can be part of Summary of Work or other Div 01 section. Anne Whitacre, FCSI CCS Senior Member Username: awhitacre Post Number: 1061 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Friday, November 26, 2010 - 01:58 pm:    I've had some of the same issues both in school construction projects and in hospital construction projects -- they not only want the project to get done, but they want to project a certain "good citizen" demeanor to the community at the same time. from the original question above, it seems that some of those items really are enforceable contractor issues -- noise, parking, no drinking on or near the job site, cleaning, security, response to complaints. (and the number from Ron Geren about "special project procedures" seems good to me); some of the community outreach stuff seems more like it should be a separate side-contract with the owner as part of their marketing/community relationships efforts, unless you can put a number to it: like "contractor superintendent must attend community meeting every 3rd Tuesday from 7 pm to 10 pm and be prepared to present project updates and respond to community questions" I think for a lot of this stuff, you need to be able either put it entirely under the control of the contractor (like: enforcing no smoking on the job site) or you need to be able to quanitify the effort involved (like my example above). if its fuzzy, you'll get bids that either don't include it at all, or they completely overestimate the time/dollars involved. Justatim Senior Member Username: justatim Post Number: 10 Registered: 04-2010 Posted on Monday, November 29, 2010 - 09:11 am:    I did a church project where smoking and swear words, including "damn" were unacceptable in addition to other, more common behavioral issues. It was very important to get it right the first time, so we pre-qualified prospective bidders (5) and met with each to emphasize these special requirements. One contractor felt he could not control his workers to that extent, and he was not invited to bid. Ralph Liebing, RA, CSI, CDT Senior Member Username: rliebing Post Number: 1224 Registered: 02-2003 Posted on Monday, November 29, 2010 - 11:05 am:    When i was a building code official, the local Home Builders got involved with our code change process [naturally] When they saw some of the new provisions in the CABO [red-book] code we were adopting they wanted something added to make all buildings and builders comply with the code!!![ever hear of law?] Anyway we included an unadopted provision requring compliance as part of the code--- the same old problems persisted. Nathan Woods, CCCA, LEED AP Senior Member Username: nwoods Post Number: 369 Registered: 08-2005 Posted on Monday, November 29, 2010 - 11:15 am:    "One contractor felt he could not control his workers to that extent, and he was not invited to bid." Sounds like that was the one trustworthy contractor :-) Justatim Senior Member Username: justatim Post Number: 11 Registered: 04-2010 Posted on Monday, November 29, 2010 - 04:09 pm:    Re "trustworthy contractor": Actually, the contractor hired did an excellent job and his workers were very cooperative with the intent. The only blatant misbehavior (a off-color remark to a female church member) was summarily handled with immediate firing. Louis Medcalf, FCSI, CCSX (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - 01:54 pm:    I think the idea of making these requirements a supplementary or special condition is better than putting it into the specs because the A/E has to enforce what's in the specs, and we don't want to be in the position of enforcing clean language and similar restrictions. That is, we don't want our client coming back at us for what they regard as insufficient assiduity.