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  • 1.  Contracts

    Posted 06-11-2014 12:31 PM
    What form of agreement is advisable to use in the following circumstance:

    The Architect, will be contracting to an Engineer lead on a project. The Engineer will be contracting to the Owner/Client. In essence, the Architect will be a consultant to the Engineer. What AIA form of agreement should be considered for use in this arrangement?


    Thank you in advance for any comments provided.
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    Neal Rinella AIA
    Principal / COO
    Taylor & Associates Architects
    Ivine CA
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  • 2.  RE: Contracts

    Posted 06-12-2014 06:54 PM
    One approach is to use the AIA Architect-Consultant Agreement as a starting point, and flip things so that the architect is the consultant.  The AIA agreements are pretty even-handed in favor of the consultant.  You may want to edit the terminology to be "Prime Consultant" (the engineer) and "architect".  Read through the whole agreement and make sure the right title goes where.

    Engineer might have an engineering council standard form that deals with sub-consultants, too.

    In the past, I've been the architect-subconsultant in some of these relationships.  Many engineers aren't really handy with the paperwork part of construction contract administration, so if you want to, you could consider offering to provide some of those services for additional compensation.

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    Joel Niemi AIA
    Principal
    Snohomish WA
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  • 3.  RE: Contracts

    Posted 06-12-2014 07:35 PM
    This is a great question. I have had the same project arrangement several times. I did not find a suitable agreement in the AIA docs without significant editing. In the end, we used language from other source documents. Perhaps other practitioners have discovered a good AIA doc to start with. ------------------------------------------- William Thompson, AIA, LEED AP BD+C Principal Wm. Thompson AIA & Assoc., Architect Guilford, CT -------------------------------------------
    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Contracts

    Posted 06-14-2014 02:44 PM
    The NSPE has some very good documents that are similar to the AIA documents.  The document in question is the EJCDC Document: Engineer/Sub-consultant/Architect.  It may need a little tweaking, but what contract doesn't?

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    James Brown AIA
    Principal
    QAE LLC
    Scottsdale AZ
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  • 5.  RE: Contracts

    Posted 06-16-2014 06:01 PM
    The following showed up as a reply from a recent AIA webinar on small-firm / small-project oriented contracts:

    Q: Are there small projects/small firm Architect/Consultant agreements? Are there any plans for a small firms version of C401?

     

    A: You may wish to consider using C727-1992. C727 is shorter than C401-2007 and allows the parties to insert a description of the consultant's services, rather than relying on a flow-down from the prime agreement as in C401. The synopsis for C727 is below:

     

    C727-1992, Standard Form of Agreement Between Architect and Consultant for Special Services

    AIA Document C727™-1992 provides only the terms and conditions of the agreement between the architect and the consultant-the description of services is left entirely to the parties, and must be inserted in the agreement or attached in an exhibit. It is often used for planning, feasibility studies, post-occupancy studies, and other services that require specialized descriptions.

     

    In addition, please note that we will be working on consulting agreements over the next few years, and in the run up to the 2017 release of the updated A201 Family of documents, and we will consider if our existing library of Architect-Consultant agreements should be expanded or improved.

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    Joel Niemi AIA
    Principal
    Snohomish WA
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    Original Message