By Marvin Kemp, AIA, CSI, CDT
This is the second of several postings
to The Felt Tips blog that deal with the umbrella topic of The Golden Rule: Do
Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You. This post deals with the problems
associated with conducting construction contract administration via email in
the age of smart phones and other hand held digital emailing devices. The last
post titled “The Message You’re Sending” dealt with the messages that you send
in how you handle your business and more importantly the messages sent to
employees of companies. In a couple of weeks, I'll present some thoughts on how
attention to detail, or lack thereof, can affect your business dealings and the
folks you hope to do business with.
Most of us involved in the
construction industry have at some point received an email with the subject
line “FW: (insert vague subject here)” and then the body of the email says “See
below” with the sender’s signature line, probably followed by either “Sent from
my iPhone,” “Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Smartphone” or some similar
signature. I seem to receive several of these a week if not several a day. I
usually look at who the email was sent to in the “To:” line and am dismayed to
see that it’s me, the engineers on our team, the client and several levels of
the contracting team. Which one of us is to respond?
That’s always the $6M question: when
12 people are in the “To:” line, who is responsible for the eventual answer? If
the question comes from the field, the superintendent or some other member of
the contracting team, I usually assume that a member of the A/E team should
provide the appropriate response. As I am the architect who usually holds the
contract with the owner, at the onset of construction I always let the
consulting engineers on the team know that I am to review any response prior to
it going back to the contractor. This isn’t a control issue but a way for me to
ensure that all issues are resolved and coordinated with other members of the
A/E team. For example, a suggestion from the field to suspend the electrical
transformer on Unistrut by drilling through the flanges of structural steel
beams is easy for the electrical engineer to agree to, but I need to make sure
the structural engineer accepts this damage to steel that he designed and
specified.
The situation gets more complicated
when one of three things happens. The first being the contractor forwards an
email from the sub-contractor without fully reading or fully grasping the
situation. I call this type of contractor either a “buck-passer” or a
“paper-pusher.” That’s probably an unfair characterization because all general contractors
are simply trying to finish their contracted work in the best and most
judicious manner, but part of their duty to the owner is to fully understand
all the issues circulating through the construction site and fully coordinate
the work of all of their subcontractors. The example above with the electrical
transformer and Unistrut actually happened to me recently. Unfortunately, this
project was a tenant fit-out of an existing building and we do not have the
services of a structural engineer on our team. If the contractor had taken a
moment to look at the cover sheet of the drawings and see there is no
structural engineer on our team or better yet call me, his response to the
electrician might have been to consider a different attachment method. Instead,
we had some back and forth through email and then finally we reached resolution
only after I phoned the site superintendent to fully understand the
electrician’s intentions.
The second complicating factor is when
the body of the email below the “see below” comment is unclear. I recently became
involved in a complicated issue surrounding a smoke damper. To be fair, I
didn’t get involved early enough, choosing to let my engineer handle it, but
all the team got from him was more questions. It was only when the owner phoned
me to ask a very specific question about the building code and corridor walls,
was I able to get to the bottom of the situation and answer the question for both
the engineer and contractor.
Shame on me for not acting earlier,
but I tend to be a creature of culture. This particular owner has severely
limited our CA scope. They are seasoned professionals who choose to handle most
issues in the field themselves. We are only contracted to review submittals,
address RFI’s and perform a punch list at the end of the project. That has set
the culture that at some point, the owner steps into the email fray and says,
“this is what needs to happen” and the issue is resolved. I’m sure several
nationally known bloggers are alternately cringing and spewing coffee over
their screens as they read this. I do not like these sorts of contractual
arrangements, but certain business decisions are made from time to time that I
have to live with. I don’t like having our fee reduced or our influence during
construction diminished, but it’s not always my call.
That is the third complicating factor:
owner influence or obfuscation. Most of the work I do is for institutions of
higher learning. Nearly all of them have architects, engineers and other
construction professionals on their staffs which handle a wide range of issues
and have opinions just as strong as mine in how the projects should progress
and how situations should be resolved. The complication comes in when either
standard AIA contracts or a reasonable facsimile of the same are used. The standard
AIA contract assumes an unsophisticated owner who requires the advice and
services of an architect to help negotiate the murky waters of design and
construction. When an owner who is more sophisticated breaches their duties as
prescribed in the AIA contract, a culture may be set that allows the contractor
can circumvent the architect to suit his own needs.
That has happened to me on a recent
renovation project. I received a change notification for an exorbitant amount
of money to move sprinkler heads. As I eschewed email and spoke directly with
the contractor I learned that as the ceiling grid was going in, the owner’s representative
visited the site and directed the ceiling grid installation to move forward and
the sprinkler heads would be moved later. This owner’s rep is very young and
did not realize the ramifications of selecting the most expensive course of
action. In most cases, shifting the grid less than 6” would have eliminated the
conflicts. As I spoke with the contractor and portrayed my displeasure with
being eliminated from the discussions, he realized an alternative solution. A
minor change from 2’ by 2’ ceiling to 2’ by 4’ ceiling tile in certain
locations would alleviate relocation of all but one or two heads.
Unfortunately, it took an irate architect holding a “Come to Jesus” phone call
with the contractor for the right decision to be made.
A worse situation is when the
architect is excluded on purpose by a sub-contractor who has a prior relationship
with an owner. On a different project but with the same owner and same young owner’s
rep described above, I was pulled into a dispute between the general contractor
and a sub-contractor who knew which buttons to push with the owner. The
sub-contractor had exclusions in his bid that the general contractor did not
catch on bid day. Rather than working it out one-on-one, contractor to
sub-contractor, they both dug in their heels and the sub-contractor ordered a
meeting on-site with the owner, the maintenance shop and the general
contractor. The architect was excluded from this meeting and summarily blamed
for the problem. The documents were clear but the inexperienced owner’s rep did
not know this and the general contractor chose to avoid conflict and blame the
person who was not in attendance. It took me several phone calls with the
owner’s rep and the general contractor to solve the problem by pointing out the
correctness of the documents.
These are a few examples that I’ve
encountered recently. There are many, many others. Many of these problems can
be avoided with a few simple ideas:
1.
Use
the telephone whenever possible. Email and an RFI attachment can always be used
to finalize the answer to all parties.
2.
Use
email only for clear and concise communication.
3.
When
email is used, make sure you completely read the entire message and understand
the question before responding.
4.
When
forwarding an email, make sure you have completely read the entire message for
acceptability for all parties to read. It will save you or other team members
embarrassment later.
5.
When
email is the best solution, only include those who need to be party to the
question and answer. The email blast and “reply all” is the scourge of humanity
and tends to only create more confusion.
6.
When
the architect and engineer are on-site, review every possible condition and
question the contracting team has at the time. Make sure when you leave the
site, you completely understand all conditions that affect the question and
ultimately the answer.
7.
When
a contractor knows the architect or engineer will be on-site, be judicious with
their time. Make sure all sub-contractors are available to ask their questions
or make sure you understand them well enough to discuss them with the architect
or engineer.
Construction is confusing enough
without adding to it via email. Design intent, incomplete documents, inaccurate
bids and other items all add to that confusion. By adhering to these
suggestions, many of the problems created by email can be avoided and the work
allowed to move forward to everyone’s satisfaction.
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