any advice on how to control cost escalation from the contractor during construction for residential work? i know the aia construction contract stipulates the architect is in control of contract price changes and payment to the contractor. but the jobs i'm working on the contractor's contract is more informal and directly w/ the owner. more than once they've billed the owner for some 'unforseen' cost without me knowing. when i discover it he's already been paid and the owner doesn't want to make a stink, or its been blamed on me without me knowing!
That's why you should discuss payments with the client before the job even starts, and explain that they have the option of all the payments going through you which will provide some safeguard against unfounded charges (and then they pay you for CA), or they can deal directly with the contractor, and then it is up to them to make decisions on whether or not they want to pay the extra amounts. You should talk to them now though about the fact that you feel you are being unfairly blamed for price increases, even though they are dealing directly with the contractor and you have no way of responding to his claims or offering alternatives. You should also talk to the contractor about what has happened. The worst case scenario is that the project will end up being way over budget, and the contractor will have blamed you and thus the client will too, and if it's after the fact it may be difficult to establish what the actual reason for the change order was and whether or not there were other options. It would be fair to tell the client that they should talk to you about any extra claims the contractor is making for money - what gets tricky is when the client has actually asked for more, and the change order is totally justified, but you aren't in the loop either because the contractor doesn't want to deal with it or doesn't think it is necessary. This seems to happen on all jobs where the contractor deals directly with the client without the architect being involved in approving payments & change orders (in my experience anyway.) I think most contractors that end up working on smaller jobs (which I'm guessing this is) are not used to working with architects - they really don't know what the procedure is, nor do they want to spend the time to deal with it. And the large majority of jobs they do probably don't really require looking at the drawings too closely or expert crafstmanship.
The best thing would be to try and come up with a way to explain that you really want to know what is going on with the money in order to be able to help control costs. If you are being paid hourly the client may not want to pay you to do this - some of the many reasons why doing small jobs IS NOT WORTH IT! We're working on a small design/build job right now and the client keeps changing the scope (even though he already signed the contract), hassling us about how much time we spend meeting with subs, you name it. NOT FUN
if you are basising your fee on the construction cost, the client might be reluctant to tell you that he/she is spending extra money here and there because your fee will go up. i had a client like this. the contractor wasn't that great and fucked up a lot of stuff - not to mention he low-balled all of the other bidders. so of course he eventually started coming back to the owner asking for more money. most of these transactions were behind closed doors because the client didn't want to spend extra money to two people. this particular client was also reluctant to rock the boat or make a stink when charged. just all around shady on both of their parts if you ask me.
I laugh when clients don't want to include the Architect in the contract admin phase on sf residential work. they think they are actually saving money, mean while the contractor is not providing a credible service and getting paid a ton of the weak efforts. At some point I step away, but when you can point out and articulate where and what you are doing for them more often than not they come around.
Everytime I contract my own work on home or other small projects everybody ( contractors included are shocked by how quickly it gets accomplished and the cost at what I get it done for. Its pretty amazing that others don't figure it out....I guess its there loss.
Dec 10, 04 12:11 pm ·
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dealing with shady contractors
any advice on how to control cost escalation from the contractor during construction for residential work? i know the aia construction contract stipulates the architect is in control of contract price changes and payment to the contractor. but the jobs i'm working on the contractor's contract is more informal and directly w/ the owner. more than once they've billed the owner for some 'unforseen' cost without me knowing. when i discover it he's already been paid and the owner doesn't want to make a stink, or its been blamed on me without me knowing!
it should be titled 'dealing WITH shady contractors'...
** typo corrected by Archinect mod **
i liked the first spelling, made you sound like sonny from the godfather, bodda bip, bodda bop, bodda bap. i say take em to the mattresses!
your client is doing a ltlle shady deals with contractor. or, you are out o picture. or thats what the contractor wants. talk to the client.
That's why you should discuss payments with the client before the job even starts, and explain that they have the option of all the payments going through you which will provide some safeguard against unfounded charges (and then they pay you for CA), or they can deal directly with the contractor, and then it is up to them to make decisions on whether or not they want to pay the extra amounts. You should talk to them now though about the fact that you feel you are being unfairly blamed for price increases, even though they are dealing directly with the contractor and you have no way of responding to his claims or offering alternatives. You should also talk to the contractor about what has happened. The worst case scenario is that the project will end up being way over budget, and the contractor will have blamed you and thus the client will too, and if it's after the fact it may be difficult to establish what the actual reason for the change order was and whether or not there were other options. It would be fair to tell the client that they should talk to you about any extra claims the contractor is making for money - what gets tricky is when the client has actually asked for more, and the change order is totally justified, but you aren't in the loop either because the contractor doesn't want to deal with it or doesn't think it is necessary. This seems to happen on all jobs where the contractor deals directly with the client without the architect being involved in approving payments & change orders (in my experience anyway.) I think most contractors that end up working on smaller jobs (which I'm guessing this is) are not used to working with architects - they really don't know what the procedure is, nor do they want to spend the time to deal with it. And the large majority of jobs they do probably don't really require looking at the drawings too closely or expert crafstmanship.
The best thing would be to try and come up with a way to explain that you really want to know what is going on with the money in order to be able to help control costs. If you are being paid hourly the client may not want to pay you to do this - some of the many reasons why doing small jobs IS NOT WORTH IT! We're working on a small design/build job right now and the client keeps changing the scope (even though he already signed the contract), hassling us about how much time we spend meeting with subs, you name it. NOT FUN
if you are basising your fee on the construction cost, the client might be reluctant to tell you that he/she is spending extra money here and there because your fee will go up. i had a client like this. the contractor wasn't that great and fucked up a lot of stuff - not to mention he low-balled all of the other bidders. so of course he eventually started coming back to the owner asking for more money. most of these transactions were behind closed doors because the client didn't want to spend extra money to two people. this particular client was also reluctant to rock the boat or make a stink when charged. just all around shady on both of their parts if you ask me.
I laugh when clients don't want to include the Architect in the contract admin phase on sf residential work. they think they are actually saving money, mean while the contractor is not providing a credible service and getting paid a ton of the weak efforts. At some point I step away, but when you can point out and articulate where and what you are doing for them more often than not they come around.
Everytime I contract my own work on home or other small projects everybody ( contractors included are shocked by how quickly it gets accomplished and the cost at what I get it done for. Its pretty amazing that others don't figure it out....I guess its there loss.
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