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The Practice Management Knowledge Community (PMKC) identifies and develops information on the business of architecture for use by the profession to maintain and improve the quality of the professional and business environment.  The PMKC initiates programs, provides content and serves as a resource to other knowledge communities, and acts as experts on AIA Institute programs and policies that pertain to a wide variety of business practices and trends.

    

  • 1.  Excessive time spent during CA

    Posted 06-24-2016 06:53 PM

    We are seeing a surge in the amount of time being spent on normal construction administration.  Typically, we review submittals (shop drawings and product data), and make monthly visits to the site (on simple projects).  Lately, as contractors have added sophisticated software to their project Managers and Superintendents, we are receiving daily RFI's and questions.  It appears that much of this is geared toward creating change orders, and/or the contractor covering his liability. Many of the answers are clearly located in the drawings and /or specs.

     

    Has anyone developed an effective way to :

    A.      Charge additional for this added work?

    B.      Limit the number  of RFI's or submittals

     

    Thanks,

     

    Gary E. Congdon AIA, LEED ap

    President

     

    LEE & SAKAHARA ARCHITECTS, AIA Inc.

    6280 S. Valley View, Ste. 116, Las Vegas, NV 89118

    ph: (702) 270-6600

     

    16842 Von Karman Ave., Ste. 125, Irvine, CA 92606

    ph: (949) 261-1100  | www.leesak.com

     



  • 2.  RE: Excessive time spent during CA

    Posted 06-27-2016 06:11 PM

    Read up on the Contractor's Bible for Change Orders:

    Contractor's Guide to Change Orders

    Bnibooks remove preview
    Contractor's Guide to Change Orders
    Change Orders are a fact of life. It's human nature for people to change their minds. This book is designed to provide you with valuable guidance and working tools for increasing profits on those changes. Everything you need for lean, advantageous contract interpretation is in this single-volume workbook.
    View this on Bnibooks >
    ------------------------------
    Bruce Spiewak AIA
    Principal
    Bruce J. Spiewak, AIA, Consulting Architect, LLC
    West Haven CT



  • 3.  RE: Excessive time spent during CA

    Posted 06-27-2016 06:18 PM

    Gray,

    It sounds like you have either a lazy field superintendent or they are fishing for Change Orders.  To answer your question about frivolous RFIs that could have been answered if the Contractor simply opened the set of drawings or Specifications.  Keep you responses pithy and list the location where it can be found.  Keep track of these frivolous RFIs and after you have accumulated several of them, then sit down with your client and point out what is going on, tell your client that you need to be reimbursed for your time and hand him/her an invoice.  The client will then put a stop to the excessive RFIs.

    I personally use an excel spreadsheet to track my RFIs and add a hyperlink to be able to pull it up quickly.

    Good luck,

    ------------------------------
    James Sines AIA, CCCA, LEED AP
    Architect
    Adamson Associates Architects
    New York NY



  • 4.  RE: Excessive time spent during CA

    Posted 06-28-2016 06:53 PM

    I concur with James' response to your CA dilemma. Keep track of the RFI's and also act quickly in notifying the client before the paperwork piles up. Be proactive and request a meeting with the contractor. Make a list of "frivolous and lazy RFIs" and list the "legitimate" RFIs. Tell the contractor which one you will answer and which one you will not. Don't waste your time, specially in large projects. Also, push back when the contractor ask to turn around steel, concrete form-work, plumbing or casework submittals within 4 hours. Some submittals can be reviewed quickly, but you only can judge. Notify the client that large submittals require time to review in their best interest. Also, refer back to your contracts where it states the architect's time to review submittals and answer RFIs and remind the contractor and client, but at the same time let them know you are a team player and will perform within the professional standard of care. 

    ------------------------------
    Daniel Guich, NCARB, LEED AP, CDT



  • 5.  RE: Excessive time spent during CA

    Posted 06-28-2016 07:33 PM

    Sorry no solutions here only more commentary…

     

    The RFI software contractors are using has made it so much easier for them to fire off numerous questions through their cell phones or portable devices. I wonder if this is the other side of the coin of technological advances? Or perhaps this trend is a generational thing, where younger superintendents rely more on RFI software to find the answer (like google and text messaging) and the older more experienced supers rely on – well their experience…

     

    And it's not just RFI's. The number of emails AND their expected response times have also gotten out of hand. From the contractor, the client, vendors, consultants – basically everyone. They add a lot of time to our day. I'm sorry but my eyes are not focused on a cell phone or computer screen 24/7 waiting for the next email to respond to – I'm designing and drawing. I sooo want to go back to the 1990's! At least 24 hrs was a reasonable amount of time for response, not 24 minutes!

     

    So while one can argue that faster and more communication makes for a better process and thus in theory an end product, I don't think it's actually giving us more time to do the important stuff on a project, it's just creating more conversations than is necessary.

     

    Yes we can go back to our clients and try and explain all this, and try to get more fee, but good luck with that.  They don't want to be in position of asking the contractor to stop asking so many questions. If they did, the contractor will simply start not asking enough… is that the outcome we want?

     

    The only bit of advice I would say is make sure everyone is on the same page regarding response times to RFI's and perhaps let the contractor know that they will be batched and addressed on a weekly basis (or whatever time frame you see appropriate). If they knew this perhaps they will do what the old timers do and use that time to look for the answers in the drawings and specs you worked so hard on to create.

     

    David

     

     

    David M Spence  AIA, LEED AP

     

    WINDIGO ARCHITECTURE LLC

     

    914 Mt. Kemble Avenue

    Morristown, NJ 07960

    p (973) 425 7680 (ext. 105)

    f  (973) 425 3821

    www.windigodesign.com

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     






  • 6.  RE: Excessive time spent during CA

    Posted 06-28-2016 06:29 PM

    Regarding RFI's, we've included language requiring the contractor to propose an answer to the RFI for us to evaluate, and language that if they don't propose an answer, and the answer is plainly obvious or reasonably inferred from the documents, that the Architect and Owner reserve the right to charge the contractor's retainage for time spent providing responses.

    For submittals, we include similar language that the original submittal and the first resubmittal will be reviewed without prejudice, and beginning with the second resubmittal we reserve the right to charge the contractor for time spent reviewing submittals.  

    With that language in place, I recommend that any office (regardless of the early project climate) establish a billing code for "unanticipated construction administration time" for these topics at teh beginning of construction, and ANY time an item comes up, log it to that category. If all goes well, you won't need to make a claim for it - but if you wait and give the contractor repeated warnings to up their game, and they don't, you'll wish you had all that time spent (retroactively) identified and billable.  

    Once all that is in place, provide some counseling to the Owner about the value (no pun intended) of the Liquidated Damages clause in the contract, and not to give that up.  A lot of owners (I guess) see it as an affront to the contractor, and would rather forgive them for schedule slippage in the name of "cooperation", rather than NOT moving the Date of Substantial Completion "just because they're not keeping up".  LD's could pay for a lot of added design team services when things go bad. .

    Contractors increasingly seem to expect the design team to perform field coordination for them in the form of submittals and RFI's.  When it smells like that, we often will call the bluff and don't waste inordinant amounts of time trying to check other submittals for coordination to do their job for them, and send them back with a directive to coordinate the work.  It's sometimes a fine line, but as a profession we need to push that type of coordination back on the contractor and avoid taking on the risk of answers that might reflect the design condition but not the field conditions.

    ------------------------------
    John Thompson Assoc. AIA
    Production Coordinator
    Dore & Whittier Architects, Inc.
    Burlington VT



  • 7.  RE: Excessive time spent during CA

    Posted 07-04-2016 07:21 PM

    I commend the responses to this issue that suggest teamwork between the architect and the contractor verses an 'us' and 'them' dialogue. I have witnessed the issue of multiple CA-phase RFI from an architect serving as the project representative, and as the site architect from a design-build entity, and for the past 5 years as the owner for higher-education renovations and new construction.  In competitive bid environments, low-balling contractors will take advantage of loosely defined project manual (drawings and specs) in order to realize change orders as much as 30 percent over the bid.

    Elimination of RFI and Change Orders is certainly not the expectation. However, recognizing the teams' shortfalls and the effort it may take to resolve issues during the implementation will ultimately create a better experience for the owner and all that are involved. If you have not budgeted the 18 to 23% of fee for this phase, don't expect the owner to be willing to compensate for additional time. Yes, I agree that some RFI are quite clearly answered with a knowledge of the bidding documents; yet many RFI (especially when it comes to MEP coordination) are a result of lacking or conflicting documentation - no matter how small - that means extra work not anticipated by a trade.

    In the spirit of teamwork, I believe the best means to change a 'software-based gun-happy RFI'  environment is to write a good construction spec to revert back to a culture of face-to-face resolution of RFI rather than the digital  RFI to change-order process that is transforming the industry. Face-to-face resolution is not always black-and-white, and often involves compromise. Avoid putting the Owner in the position of being the arbitrator of RFI's; and seek early win-win-win resolutions.

    Once a culture of face-to-face review and resolution is reinstated (either via phone call or phone conversation), the vested time involved from all parties for extraneous RFI may become a deterrent for repeated / related / or document-identified RFI.... as nobody (architect. contractor, or owner) to create more work for themselves.

    ------------------------------
    David Moehring, AIA, NCARB
    Senior Capital Planner
    University of Washington Bothell
    and
    AIA Chicago PMKC Past-Chair




  • 8.  RE: Excessive time spent during CA

    Posted 06-29-2016 09:28 AM

    Strongly recommend CSI's Construction Document Technology (CDT) and the Certified Construction Contract Administration (CCCA) programs for those performing construction administration.  Understanding how the "game is supposed to be played" will provide you with the knowledge to address the issues as they arise, and help you and the Owner manage the contractor. 

    A free intro is available at http://csinet.org/main/certification/CCCA

    For those who prefer videos, the Tampa Chapter of CSI has the following link for CDT training: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy69kYH_ZJYL_sY56E5fFd4QDh5Nre3f6

    To stop losing our reputation and fees on the job site, we must educate ourselves beyond just being designers.

    ------------------------------
    Donald Koppy AIA, CSI, CCS
    Architecture Team Leader
    Atkins
    Tampa FL