Custom Residential Architects Network

The Small Firm Round Table will be meeting with the contract document staff in March. What is working for you in contract documents and what would you like to see changed or added.
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Linna Frederick FAIA
Principal
Frederick & Frederick Architects
Beaufort SC
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Linna,

I believe that the Contract Doc's group needs to publish a fair and balanced "Assignment of Architects Contract" piece as a freestanding document, published as a PDF, and available for any architect to download upon short notice, so that they are able to offer it as a replacement for strongly biased documents put forward by lenders (often at the last minute on a settlement day).

I made this request after being served an onerous Assignment document by my client's bank on the morning of their settlement, and being told by a bank officer in not so many words "you better sign this or you will screw up your client's settlement". The proposed document took away many rights I had under my standing agreement and was very unfair. I scrambled, redacted clauses, inserted substitute language, and was able to return a document before the settlement, at least removing the liability of a spoiled settlement from my shoulders. My detailed account is posted below, and it was also covered in an article in Residential Architect as well.

See my discussion of this further back in this timeline here at CRAN. I presented this idea to the Doc's group back then, and they refused my request. The reasons they gave were clearly invalid. First they claimed that the B101 already included a clause for assignment of architects contract, to which I reminded them that Architects working on houses are almost uniformly using the B105 which does not include any such clause. They then told me it would be difficult to craft language that could be used in any state because laws vary, to which I reminded them that the clause included in B101 is already offered for use under laws that vary.

I came away from the exchange feeling they were looking for excuses to not act on my request. So yes, you could carry this request to them again. This is clearly a small firm issue, only those using the B105 are completely vulnerable here. It should not have been this way for me. I should have had resources from the AIA at my fingertips, and the Profession should have the ability to respond to this kind of housing industry "rights grab" with uniformity and some solidarity. Otherwise small practitioners are going to find themselves agreeing to onerous terms under pressure.

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Gregory La Vardera
Architect
Gregory La Vardera Architect
Merchantville NJ
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We often use the AIA Owner-Architect Agreement B 727 for special, limited scope of services projects.  I understand that this document will no longer be available after March of this year.  Does AIA have a replacement in mind?  It will be missed by my small firm as it is a very useful format for us.  Any suggestions for other AIA docs that will do the job for limited services would be appreciated.
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Lynn Anderson AIA
Anderson Architecture, PLLC
Southern Pines NC
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I have been using the Online Documents on Demand, primarily for the B105™-2007 Standard Form of Agreement Between Owner and Architect for a Residential or Small Commercial Project. This system works much better and is less expensive than the old Windoze-only software for electronic documents.

That said, it is still somewhat awkward to edit and include common items like my E&O 'standard of practice' paragraph. When you get the document completed online, you then have to edit some of it on the downloaded PDF; if you aren't careful, you can miss certain fields because they don't show up as colored boxes or some other indicator. Then, when it is completed, it is tricky to print a PDF of the completed document so there is one for the Client and one for the Architect. If you goof, you will be spending another $20 to correct an otherwise simple typographic error.

Keep working on it.

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Paul Adams AIA
Principal
Earth And Sky Architecture
Denver CO
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Personally, I liked having the A105/205 being TWO separate documents. This made it very easy to incorporate the A205 General Conditions by reference, and then the Owner and Contractor could use whatever contract form they wished. (Subject to A205 superceding any provision to the contrary.) Now that the documents have been combined in A105, it is harder to use, and requires more input from both parties, as well as getting both of them to agree to use it -- sometimes difficult if the Contractor has invested a lot of money into producing his own contract.

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Richard Morrison AIA
Richard Morrison, AIA, ASID
Redwood City CA
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