Jerome, unfortunately the first thing that needs to be determined is whether or not the Developer indeed agreed to forego the warranties. If that is how their contract is written, that’s what has to be complied with. I doubt there is anything in Owner-Architect Agreement stating the Architect will be listened to; just that the A/E will be blamed to everything the Contractor and Developer decide to do without A/E involvement.
To my knowledge there are no Code or FAR requirements for extended warranties. If the government will not own the building but merely lease them, the buildings must simply meet Federal tenant guidelines. From the sounds of this forum, that probably won’t happen, but that is for the Developer to worry about. One would hope that Housing and Urban Development actually follows its own guidelines.
If the Developer has put you and the Architect in the position where you are essentially answering to the Contractor, all you can do is protect yourself as much as possible. You’re wasting your time, energy, and stress levels on someone who doesn’t care to do things right. They are looking at making as much money as they can, as quickly as possible. Our tax dollars at work and play. This rip-off probably will be a drop in the bucket compared to what the occupants of the building will generate.
Ken, this project was HUD financed, the contract docs were peer reviewed by the Dominion Group, and several HUD forms were included in the Project Manual; however we were not required to follow any HUD guidelines, in fact the construction is being permitted under the 2004 FBC, which was grandfathered in from the previous project. We did not follow any FAR requirements.
I think the issue is entirely different than other posters here. The issue is that the contractor believes that these warranties did not exist in the documents upon which his maximum price is based. All you have to do is determine if this is true to figure out whether this is a change or not. He’s simply saying that the warranties will be an extra cost over and above his GMP. Like it or not, this is a perfectly legitimate claim. It happens a lot when GMPs are calculated on preliminary documents.
Interestingly, this dispute may not be about very many dollars once you add up the few extended warranties that are actually specified, and their often relatively low cost (relative to the project total).
The contractor can prepare documented line item amounts for each one. The owner is then free to forgo those warranties – which all here would agree is probably not advised, but is the owner’s prerogative – or to pay those extra costs the contractor is able to document to get the warranties.
It’s as simple as that.