Practice Management Member Conversations

Having been in active combat against a fearless enemy who wants me dead... I can tell you... this is NOT ok... so why do YOU settle for this?! WHY?!  

Eventually, the client offers a partial payment. It is not enough to cure the default, cover the consultants, or repay what the firm has already carried. It is enough to make continuing feel defensible. They ask us to complete the permit revisions and maintain construction support, promising that the balance will be paid when funding closes. The contractor is mobilizing. The landlord is applying pressure. Staff members have invested themselves in the work and want to see it succeed. Suspending services now could trigger delay claims, damage relationships with people who did nothing wrong, and create a public version of the story in which the architect abandoned the project at its most vulnerable moment. The client knows this. Whether intentionally or not, every stakeholder depending on us has become collateral against our ability to say no.

This is where the contract stops answering the question. I can enforce our rights and protect the company, but doing so may kill the project and ensure that no one gets paid. I can extend one final act of grace, but that grace is financed by employees who never agreed to become investors, consultants who trusted our judgment, and a firm whose survival depends on collecting the fees it earns. Leadership is supposed to mean standing behind your people, yet architecture trains us to stand behind the project until the final problem is solved. Those obligations now point in opposite directions. One path risks making us appear transactional when a client genuinely needs a partner. The other risks teaching everyone involved that our professionalism, loyalty, and fear of reputational harm can be converted into free capital.

Do you suspend services and defend the firm before the unpaid balance becomes an existential threat, or continue long enough to protect the project and preserve the possibility that everyone is eventually made whole? At what point does professional commitment stop being integrity and become the quiet abandonment of the people whose livelihoods depend on your judgment?

Are you folding? Are you collecting? 

I've been in this position and used the AIA contract terms to be paid. The amount due was almost $200,000.00 and the developer was offering excuses. Three weeks before the project construction documents completion date, I sent the developer the required notice that we would suspend services if we were not paid our past due invoices. When he didn't pay, we sent the letter suspending services. We printed all the sheets and laid them on the conference table. I sent a photo and said I would resume services,  stamp and sign them upon receipt of payment. My final invoice was paid directly from the financing bank. We did not perform construction administration. 

I never worked for him again. But I thought about how much work our firm would have had to produce to generate that same $200,000.00, particularly since that future money would come from the profit of our future work. I'd do it again.  In my mind there is no conflict between the project, the firm, and the owner. The contract is the working agreement. Every other professional service that I use, from accountants to physicians, has no conversation about whether or not payment is due.

If I read your comments correctly, it appears that your client has agreed to a partial payment, thus it remain to determine the amount of payment. If that is correct, I'd suggest the partial payment include the interests of all parties depending on you, excepting only amounts owing to you (your firm). Thus, your dependents are made whole, and you have demonstrated good faith in your client to pay you when the time comes.