5 Comments

1. Butch Hampton says:

   Thursday, Oct 22, 2015 at

   Bidding is based on the discrete requirements and representations in the Bid Documents, General Conditions, Specification and Drawings for the work and are commonly known in the industry as Contract Documents. The Drawings and Specifications are prepared by Design Professionals that are regulated and licensed by the State and usually hired by the project owner. In simple terms, if there are errors or omissions in these documents which are prepared by others that result in additional cost or time to the Contractor, then the Contractor is entitled to cost and/or time adjustment. Many of the rights and remedies of the respective parties are embraced in the Public Contract Code and confirmed legal cases. However, there can be other concurrent or contributing factors that make discrete determination difficult and often require some other form of resolution.

   Contrary to Mr. Lees thoughts, unforeseen conditions are seldom the contractors’ responsibility.

   I have no stake in this matter but am merely sharing nearly 50 years of practical experience in the Construction Industry.

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2. Ellen Blondini Murphy says:

   Thursday, Oct 22, 2015 at

   Excellent

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3. B Sharp says:

   Friday, Oct 23, 2015 at

   Butch Hampton is correct. All participating General Contractors bid on the exact same documents and unforeseen conditions are just that – something no entity could have anticipated. However, on many occasions the General Contractors, or requesting party, absorb the costs they are requesting as a good faith act in building relationships. The reason you don’t hear about requests for additional time/money on private projects is precisely because it has nothing to do with tax dollars.

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4. Jim Shorts says:

   Friday, Oct 23, 2015 at

   Steve, your dad may have been a GC but you obviously know nothing about general contracting and the bidding process. Morals have nothing to do with bidding. If this were the case then let me pose this question to you: if you are a contractor hired by the county to, let’s say, dig a trench for a utility line. During this process you come across major buried obsticals e.g., other utilities lines that no one even knew existed, ancient Indian burial remains, etc. worst case scenario it creates major cost overruns in terms of labor, equipment and materials. You’re telling me that you would let your company go bankrupt and many employees losing their jobs because you would do the ‘moral’ thing? Your argument isn’t even weak it’s downright silly. Have you ever heard of contingencies? Those aren’t for ice cream and cake at the end of the job, they are for just these types of unknowns. Put another way, let’s say you can’t finish the job because you took the moral route and went bankrupt. What do you think will happen? The county would hire another contractor and pay them to finish the job. So they are going to pay one way or the other. Make sense?

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5. jimvs says:

   Friday, Oct 23, 2015 at

   I concur with Mr. Hampton’s statement regarding construction contracts – as far as it goes. One issue is contract language, the domain of lawyers who usually specialize in contract law. Not all of that contract language is standardized.

   Much of the value in a low-bid contract lies in the details of the Contract Documents noted above.

   Not many large projects (especially public projects) go from contract award to completion and acceptance without significant change, in my experience. Ignoring “acts of God”, a lot of that has to do with which side has the best hired guns aka estimators, engineers, PMs, etc.

   I believe there are many large and successful construction companies producing quality projects for owners as agreed upon. There are some that seem to succeed based on other skills.

   A friend of mine with construction and CM experience across the US once told me, “Why do you think they call them Contractors? If they made their money by just building things, they’d call them Builders.”

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