Undiscovered Health Threatening Hazardous Materials
Contracts usually permit the contractor to stop work in an area where these are found. The presence of these materials are the owner's responsibility and should at his own expense either have the area cleaned up or provide conditions under which the work can progress. Many times the owner will have a special site investigation prepared before proceeding with the design or at least before a contractor is chosen, to reduce his risk.

Don't Wave a Red Flag
While there are many factors that enter into the determination of whether the engineer has met his or her responsibilities, the need for change orders during construction and their impact on project costs are key from an owner's perspective. The federal government weighs this heavily in their evaluations. The feds also consider a 5% increase in project costs due to an architects or engineers errors or omissions as a red flag on their performance that triggers further investigation.

Do All You Can to Provide Construction Phase Services
On any complex or "risky" project you are considering, the addition of your construction phase services may well tip the scales in favor of taking the project. Conversely, design without those services might well be grounds for turning down a project. Should you proceed with design without construction phase services, make sure the owner assumes all responsibility for interpretation of the contract documents and for construction observation and waives any claims against the engineer that may be connected to them.

3 D, 4 D, 5 D…
3 D modeling is not new. It is a part of and sometimes mistaken for BIM , building information modeling. A 3 D model does not a BIM make. 4 D and 5 D are time and cost. In the future good BIM modeling will mean that when one of the team that has access to the BIM model makes a change, that change will also indicate how long it will take to do it and how much it will add to the cost. If you were at the CASE Convocation in San Francisco last week you would know more of the details about BIM and glimpsed into the future of this new project delivery system. Much more on BIM will appear here.

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