Well I thought I’d heard it all, but today I received a request from a client (the developer) to delete Div. 1 in its entirety because it conflicts with the Owner-Contractor Agreement and GMP. This is a privately funded rather large condominium project in Florida. Any thought from my fellow specwriters on the impact on my Div. 2-14 sections other than deleting references to them?
Who’s going to review submittals? Who will approve substitutions? Who’s overseeing quality control and reviewing test results? Payment Procedures? Mock-ups? Construction Facilities? If you are responsible for any of these (or others), then your sections should remain. If you are not responsible for these, then let them do what they want and change references for Division 01 Sections to “Owner-Contractor Agreement”.
You had similar Florida adventures down the page around 4-19-2005 called “specifications dilemma”.
Did your DIV 1 as well as the rest of the Con Docs preceed the O-C agreement and GMP? Is this then their idea of a value engineering item?
In my experience, no matter how comprehensive the O-C agreement is, it in the end is about money and contractural responsibilities and not about day to day construction procedures or about setting standards of quality.
We have corporate clients who want to use their own Agreements and General Conditions, but we have found that they are not nearly as comprehensive as A201.
We use a “pecking order” provision wherein we note that the project is controlled by Owner’s documents, but situations not covered in them maybe covered in the specs; and it neither cover the circumstances we defer to A201-1997.
There is so much in A201, and it includes ALL paties, that not to have it at all is a real loss-- and threat!
Does your audience assume your firm will not perform CA?
Are the General Conditions of the Contract between Owner and Contractor proprietary?
What kind of general conditions and agreement will conflict with generic (non-AIA A201) administrative and procedural requirements of Division 1 (01)?
If your firm is not providing CA and the client has the administrative and procedural requirements covered in some other form, I would say “now worries” but put your position in writing to your client to CYA.
Another possible issue…Are the so called conflicts created because the O-C Agreement contains criteria that is better placed in Div 01? Many Owner created agreements and conditions I have seen, creep into and create conflict in this manner. It can be a major process to dig through the Owners docs and find all the conflicts.
There is no reason to object to minimizing, or even deleting, Division 01 if necessary requirements are otherwise stipulated to the Contractor, and it may well be that this is the case with the Owner-Contractor agreement. Division 01 sections are an augmentation to General Conditions. I know of many Owners that include General Conditions items within standard forms of agreements, and some that combine the agreement along with the general conditions (and there are some AIA documents that do this as well…).
What you need to do is examine the form of agreement and then make a persuasive argument for developing Division 01 sections for their intented purpose. Make sure that things in the Owner/Contractor agreement are NOT in conflict with what your duties are, as stipualted in your agreement with the Owner (specifically CA duties during construction). This is a common problem.
The best way to attack this is to try to get a redacted copy of the general conditions. (One without the senstive issues of cost and whatnot.) Barring that, there is another general approach that may work.
There are a number of Division 01 Sections that are quite intimately linked to the technical sections, and some that hardly are at all. Those that are closely linked really need to be included and you could make the pitch for those. Typically they’d be:
012500 Substitution Procedures
013300 Submittal Procedures
014000 Quality Requirements
016000 Product Requirements
017100 Examination and Preparation
017300 Execution
017500 Starting and Adjusting
Sections that owners are more touchy about controlling would be:
012600 Contract Modification Procedures
012900 Payment Procedures
017700 Closeout Procedures
017800 Closeout Submittals
Those that are in the middle, where the owner may or may not have strong opinions, but the contractor probably does (and may therefore prevail) are:
011400 Work Restrictions
013100 Project Management and Coordination
013200 Construction Progress Documentation
014300 Quality Assurance (as regards qualifications)
015000 Temporary Facilities and Controls
017400 Cleaning and Waste Management
Figure out what’s really important in the Division 01 to make the technical sections whole. Focus on that. Then if you can get some of the more important stuff in the third group, maybe. The second group, leave it up to the owner. If you have to, merge the critical sections into a single one that makes it seem like it’s no big deal, you just want this one section.
Good luck.
There seems to be a misunderstanding by this developer of the purpose the General Requirements. Every section of your specifications relies on information in Division 01 to some degree. If you omit the General Requirements, you will have to put all of those pertinent articles about submittals, quality, products, etc., back into each individual spec section. The result will probably be a doubling of the size of the project manual, but if that makes them happy, so be it.
Jerome,
Every time you post something I cringe.
I often review the Owner’s edited General Conditions of the Contract for Construction and delete items that may be already covered. Sometimes I will advise the Owner to delete the requirements in the Contract. But I don’t ever throw the baby out with the bath water.
(Was this the same Developer that did not need the specs?)
If you delete Division 01 in its entirety, you will have to go back and edit every section where there is a reference to a specific Division 01 section.
Tell the Developer to stop playing Architect and let you do your job!
I have been told before to use an owners general conditions in place of Div. 1, but as I compared Div. 1 to the general conditions, it became clear that the general conditions covered the Owners requirements while saying very little about the architects requirements for the contractor.
Leaving out Div. 1 is simply another way of telling the Architect to hand over the contract documents and take a hike. If the architect is to be completely removed from the construction administration process, then this might be alright stupid on the Owners part but alright. Otherwise, we have to use Division 1 to address what we will require of the contractor, as per the list that Lynn pointed out.
On my project, I decided to painstakingly compare the GC to my Div. 1 documents and I just deleted everything from Div 1 that conflicted with or repeated text in the GC.
How about pulling out the good old Uniform Location of Subject Matter and showing that to the client along with a discussion of topics as suggested by the other posts above? That can be a wonderful guide to what should be where, especially as an industry standard. We all (should) follow the same general location of information; Division 1 being no exception.
David - Actually this is a different Developer than my previous ‘specification dilemna’, the Contractor and the Developer on this project are ones whom We’d like to have on every project, very professional, very fair, however they have placed us in the situation of having to review Div. 1 compare it to the executed A111 and A201 and come up with a modified Division 1 or recommend deletion of Div. 1 all of which they need by Monday in order to close on the construction loan. The developer has agreed to compensate us for additional services, but having other deadlines this week and only so many hours in a day, what to do…its a difficult choice to make, the Developer is one of our better clients, we are currently working on our sixth project together within the past four years. The project in question being a 52 story high-end condominium project…looks like it will be a long night…thanks for the posts they have been very informative.
Richard - looks like you hit it right on the nose, that is exactly what we are doing…its good to see we are not the only schmucks out there…p.s. for a explanation of the word “schmuck” talk to Helene.
Issue a COORDINATED Div 1 at a later date via Change Order. Do NOT agree to live without unless the Client/Owner is also the Contractor.
Sorry to sound like a broken record, but I suspect I’ve suggested in a posting before that it pays to read state architectural licensure statutes about once a year.
Just because a construction manager or an owner doesn’t think it’s necessary to practice architecture completely and asks an architect to only perform 50 percent or 80 percent of their job doesn’t necessarily mean it is a good idea. The preparation of specifications is part of the practice of architecture. The preparation of key Division 01 sections is part of that obligation. Otherwise, I’d advise the architect of record to not seal the documents.
See John Bunzick’s list above for the details.
OK, now I have an Architect (my client) who wants me to leave out Division One. They say thay have consulted their lawyer and the lawyer says it’s ok. This is a traditional Bid (negotiated), build project, mixed use condos, private work. Help!
Advise them about the items mentioned in the posts above, document the conversation, then let the architect hang him/herself.
I would love to know who “anonymous” is in this posting…hopefully no one writing project manuals of any consequence (or, more than likely never sat in the seat beside the judge having to answer questions about defining responsibilities.
I would tell your client you will not prepare documents that will potentially put them in jeopardy. You are hired to do a job, and one of the roles is to protect the parties during the construction process. I believe your client will thank you.
If not…go along Ronald’s statement…document and inform…let the Architect hang him/herself.
Get it in writing
At the end of the day, no matter what the lawyers say, your Architect/client will have to answer to it’s client as to why it did not previously “warn” about such “missing” (Div 1)req’ts…and still does not resolve a problem after it’s occurred; try to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place.
Do you Architect/client a favor and have them insert a precedence clause in their client’s GCs that cover GCs and Div 1 conflicts only…and then use your Div 1 sections. Or you can propose added services to review GCs and relocate all pertinent Div 1 req’ts, that GCs don’t cover, to respective Div 2-16 tech sections; given those two alternatives, I think that they’d take the precedence route instead.
I would not easily “give-in” and let them have their way; that would be a disservice to your client…even though they do “pay your bills.” As a profession, principles need to be adhered to, otherwise, deviations such as deleting Div 1 altogether, will become a “norm”.