The roots of the architect can be traced back to the times of the Ancient Greeks. The term architect, or arkhitekton in Greek, was the title given to the master builder who would oversee the design and construction
Category: architects
Best Practices – Commercial Terms – The Critical Commercial Terms You Need to Make Your Contracts Stronger.
With the start of the New Year, I’ve jumped right back into the deep-end with several projects that began towards the end of last year and grew hot over the break.
Each of these projects have required some amount of re-write of contract terms. Coincidentally all of these agreements started on Vendor paper (or the Vendor’s form of agreement).
As I have completed my reviews (all around the same time), it became evident that the vast majority of these were lacking some of the same things.
Some were vague in their description of scope of work, others had poorly defined payment terms, others simply offered no contractual remedy in the event of a breach.
In previous articles we reviewed the differences between a scope of work and a scope of services. Collectively these two pieces of information convey the scope of the agreement.
Of course this is the number one part of an agreement that needs to be right, but there are a few others:
Best Practice – Design Drawings – Why You Should Never Accept Drawings unless they are labelled, “Issued for Construction”.
Why an Architect might consider releasing drawings that are not complete to be a “good practice”?
Best Practices – Construction Documents – What You Should Look For Before Releasing Drawings for Bid.
Most simply take it for granted that the drawings are as they should be or they simply don’t know where to start.
Industry Watch – Design Errors – Why You Should Expect Them and How Owners Can Manage Imperfect Design.
80% of Owners surveyed expect future projects to have change orders resulting from design mistakes
Industry Watch – Construction Materials – How Lumber Liquidators Gave America Cancer.
6 to 30 of every 100,000 customers who purchased the formaldehyde laden products from Lumber Liquidators are expected to develop cancer.
Commentary – Open-Plan Offices – How Office Environments Are Making Us Less Social and Why Architects Are to Blame.
Open-plan offices were never really about increasing collaboration they were more about saving cost on Real Estate.
Best Practices – Overhead Costs – What Constitutes Overhead Costs and Why Your Projects Should Not Be Paying Them.
Despite alignment on quoting these costs separately, there still seems to be little to no consistency.
Industry Watch – The Builder’s Lien Act – How Manitoba is Taking on the topic of Prompt Payment by Modernizing the Builder’s Lien Act.
One of the strategies for maximizing the value of capital is to extend payment terms.
Review – AIA Conference 2019 – Highlights From A’19 in Las Vegas.
Every year the American Institute of Architects hosts a 3 day conference, This year the AIA conference was held in Las Vegas.
Definition – Urban Sprawl – What is it and How Can it be Defined?
These forms of developments are often maligned, they do serve a valuable function.
Industry Watch – Grenfell Tower – Final Report on Grenfell Tower Concludes Poor Procurement To Blame…Or Does It?
Hackitt’s comments on procurement are one of many recommendations which are part of an integrated systemic changes.