Claims – Consultant Issues
With the leaky building issues mostly behind us, the claims coming up through NZACS are taking on the same variety as before, with perhaps an increased emphasis on internal moisture. Here is a selection of the sorts of things we are seeing in recent claims arising out of consultant coordination.
- Me first”: it is only natural that specialist participants in the project will prioritize their own area of interest, but someone has to co-ordinate the bits into the whole, and in the absence of someone specifically appointed to the task, it falls to the architect. Unless architects want to take on the liabilities of all and sundry, the scope and responsibilities of that role need to be recorded and understood. Responsibilities for the performance of the individual work streams should rest with each participant, and that includes coordination with affected others, but the architect will need to take an overview.
- Because of the role of the architect as the generalist in the design process, as well as because of the co-ordination role, the architect is bound to be caught up in a claim involving any and all of the other consultants. If the claim is specifically related to the input by another consultant, and if that consultant is separately appointed to the client, the architect may be able to withdraw from the claim without too much hassle. For that reason, wherever possible, architects should try to avoid the appointment of other consultants as secondary consultants via the architect. If that is not possible, make sure you are adequately recompensed for taking on their risk in the first instance, and make the necessary inquiries (solvency, PI cover) to satisfy yourself that in the event a claim arises, you will be able to recover the sub-consultants share from them.
- The recent pressure on consultant engineering resources has made it difficult to design some projects within the time expectations of clients. This is a co-ordination and management issue over which the architect may have limited influence, but nevertheless needs to communicate to the client. Where the economics of a project are dependent on timely completion, the architect should be mindful of the potential to held responsible for late delivery.
- Changing of the guard: it’s hard enough picking up the pieces when a key staff member leaves. The merits of constant and consistent record keeping soon become apparent! Inevitably some staff members resist the accepted way of doing things and consider their personal management practices better, or perhaps just fail to follow the rules. Such issues are compounded when consultants change, or staff within the consultants change. New staff will be focussed on their own interests or those of their immediate employer, and the subtleties of previous understandings or unrecorded decisions will be lost. Similar problems arise when the “team” changes: for example the staff doing the shop drawings were not involved in the design phase.
- Failures directly attributable to other consultants are generally technical matters: for example slab failures, foundation subsidence, unforeseen subsoil conditions, premature corrosion of pipework or steelwork, and inadequate performance of mechanical plant. But waterproofing failures – for example, swimming pools or tanking for below-ground structures – inevitably seem to spread a wider net. Similar issues have arisen from unacceptable deflection of beams, movement cracking at linings, fire separations, and various problems with precast panels.
- As well as the usual “clash management” and the routine problems of the drawings by one consultant showing one thing while those of another show something else, claims based on co-ordination problems have thrown up:
structural elements which created internal condensation problems
mechanical work which compromises acoustic separations,
services engineers who piled plant on the top of buildings in ignorance of height control planes,
plant mounted on crude or non-existent upstands on top of membrane roofs with the inevitable leaks
contractor installed barriers or safety rails at roof level which penetrate roofing membrane
cost-cutting which removed items critical for performance of waterproofing systems,
retaining wall detailing not sufficiently respecting surveyed boundaries,
structural items which created surface water disposal problems,
bright ideas for the repositioning of hot-water cylinders which removed the necessary headroom at stairs,
on-site changes to balustrades creating more problems in the process of avoiding others,
piles driven through drains,
sprinkler sub-contractors whose shop drawings require drilling through numerous structural elements
existing retaining walls compromised by new excavations
trees intended to be retained but imperiled by subsequent excavations,
and………
- And then there is the small matter of costs. QS estimates are estimates, not fixed targets; the earlier they are made, the ropier they tend to be. We have had many claims where the architect has pushed on with the design on the basis that a QS has provided an early estimate within budget, only to have an apparent cost blowout when the later estimate comes in higher. Of course, the QS always has excuses and the architect is made to look like the errant one. The moral of the story is that you need to be fully involved in the briefing and review of the QS input before it is “published”. From thereon, every change which might have cost implications should be reviewed – if necessary with the QS assistance. That can be very problematic if the owner has sought their own estimate from a prospective builder.
