Regarding the why civil engineering isn't included in the contract's Basic Services probably would require some grizzled old veteran of AIA documents to explain. I'll offer a couple of thoughts.
1. Someone at some point who wrote the earliest AIA Owner-Architect agreements had to look at the construction and ownership industry and make the initial decision of what the industry looked like at that time, what to include and what to exclude from Basic Services. AIA documents are written to reflect practice, not create it. Once placed into a standard agreement, things tend to get a lot of inertia and don't change unless there's some really good reason to make a change- a sort of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation.
2. Looking back as far as I can research in a short time (we happen to have the early 1970 edition of the AIA's "Architect's Handbook of Professional Practice"- don't ask why we still have stuff like that on hand, but we do), even in the 1960's era of owner-architect agreements, structural/mechanical/electrical were the defined basic services. The explanation given in the handbook (1970 copyright) is the following:
"Normal Engineering Services. The phrase "normal structural, mechanical and electrical engineering services ordinarily required in connection with a construction project" [wording directly out of the owner-architect agreement]
refers to those services that are generally common to all types of building projects. Almost every building type requires structural design, mechanical design including space conditioning and plumbing design, and electrical design.... These services are part of the Architect's Basic Services and are included in the Basic Compensation."So, at that time, the thinking appears to be, "let's include the services that occur on nearly every type of building project in Basic Services." Only new buildings, etc. would require civil engineering, landscape design, etc. Those started out and remained either as owner provided or architect additional services.
3. There still are some types of building development where a civil engineer commonly is a direct to owner consultant, such as in a lot of the larger residential development projects.
4. Last, another explanation that I've heard is that many public agencies have a required, established fee schedule that sets out how much (usually a percentage type fee) will be paid for Basic Services, and then anything else is additional services. There is more leeway to negotiate additional services costs, as well as make up a little for the generally insufficient Basic Services fee. Since many of these fee schedules are long established and traditional to certain institutions and agencies, moving other consultants, such as civil engineering, into Basic Services is going to add more services without any adjustment in the compensation from the fee schedules. These institutions are not going to change their fee schedules or definitions simply because an AIA document now includes something in Basic Services that it didn't before. There was a lot of discussion about this in each owner-architect agreement update and the feeling was that as long as Basic Services were locked in percentages with many agencies, architects felt better keeping civil engineering, etc., as additional services and receiving fair additional compensation for them.
I agree with your situation, and in fact, our own agreements require that the civil engineer, landscape design, etc. all be part of the architect's services and we do define these as being "Basic Services." We also negotiate a fair fee for all of the services and are not locked into a set fee schedule, which is more than some other public owners do.
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Arlen Solochek FAIA
Associate Vice Chancellor, Capital Planning and Special Projects
Maricopa Community College
Tempe AZ
Arlen.Solochek@domail.maricopa.edu------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 07-17-2018 17:46
From: Mark Baum
Subject: Owner Wants to Hire Building Structural Eng of Record Directly
Arlen:
I agree with your response, however, I have always wondered why the AIA B-Series documents exclude Civil Engineering from Basic Services. Although I have been involved in private projects where the Owner provides Civil, in our area it is common that the Architect includes Civil under its scope of services. Certainly, all or most public entities in Louisiana include it in the Architect's scope. Personally, I prefer to have all disciplines under my umbrella to assure better coordination and integration of design details. Your thoughts?
Regards,
Mark
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Mark Baum
New Orleans LA
Original Message:
Sent: 07-16-2018 17:25
From: Arlen Solochek
Subject: Owner Wants to Hire Building Structural Eng of Record Directly
The AIA standard Owner- Architect agreements should have plenty of coverage for what happens when an owner decides to provide or is required to provide their own consultants. Basic Services generally assumes the Owner provides the civil engineer, for example, provides the soils report and geo-technical report, the site survey. While having a separate structural engineer is a little scarier than having a separate civil engineer or landscape firm, it's probably better to have the owner hold the direct structural engineering agreement if they are going to use an unusual/unique/sole source type of structural system. Otherwise, if you retain the structural engineer and then are asked to use this unique/unusual structural system, you still will take on a load of liability.
You also might further set up in the specifications that the structural system is done as delegated design through the owner's engineer's performance specification to further distance yourself and protect yourself- move it all out to the owner's engineer and owner's general contractor.
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Arlen Solochek FAIA
Associate Vice Chancellor, Capital Planning and Special Projects
Maricopa Community College
Tempe AZ
Arlen.Solochek@domail.maricopa.edu
Original Message:
Sent: 07-13-2018 15:43
From: Lawrence Adams
Subject: Owner Wants to Hire Building Structural Eng of Record Directly
Fellow Architects,
A developer/owner wants to directly contract with his preferred structural engineer of record directly outside the normal AIA Basic Services form of agreements for a new $60M multi-family project. This is because the Dev/Owner is using a specific structural load bearing cold formed galvanized steel structural insulated panel system (SIPS).
Our firm has been in business for 23 years and have not seen that before.
Any thoughts on liability, etc.?
Thanks!
Larry H. Adams, Jr. AIA
Founding Partner
ACi Architects
955 North Pennsylvania Avenue
Winter Park, FL 32789 USA
www.acistudios.com
w 407 . 740 . 8405