Here are some quotes from the book Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets courtesy of Mike Wolff with ProjectSolutions Group.
There would seem to be some natural-enough intermediary candidates in construction. Such judgments used to be the bailiwick of architects, but somewhere along the line, architects lost their grip on the grimy reality of construction. There was a time when they were referred to as the “master builder”. They shrank from their historic role as the owner’s ombudsman . . .
Rarely did the great majority of architects commit significant resources to the construction administration phase of their projects. In their absence during the construction process, building owners have gotten well and truly lost.
Competitive bidding is therefore no panacea because it fails to determine the final cost or quality of the job. In order to jumpstart construction productivity, we need two interrelated devices: 1) an intermediary with some teeth, and 2) a true fixed cost (a.ka. “hard money” or lump sum) contract, where a contractor commits to build in accordance with the design intent for a precise sum.
Traditional U.S. construction contracts in fact disguised mutable-cost contracts because contractors find it so easy to raise the price during the construction process. “Competitive bidding . . . often leads to the owner getting nailed during construction for numerous extra charges by a builder intent on making up for the too low price he had to submit to win the job in the first place”.
There would seem to be some natural-enough intermediary candidates in construction. Such judgments used to be the bailiwick of architects, but somewhere along the line, architects lost their grip on the grimy reality of construction. There was a time when they were referred to as the “master builder”. They shrank from their historic role as the owner’s ombudsman . . .
Rarely did the great majority of architects commit significant resources to the construction administration phase of their projects. In their absence during the construction process, building owners have gotten well and truly lost.
Competitive bidding is therefore no panacea because it fails to determine the final cost or quality of the job. In order to jumpstart construction productivity, we need two interrelated devices: 1) an intermediary with some teeth, and 2) a true fixed cost (a.ka. “hard money” or lump sum) contract, where a contractor commits to build in accordance with the design intent for a precise sum.
Traditional U.S. construction contracts in fact disguised mutable-cost contracts because contractors find it so easy to raise the price during the construction process. “Competitive bidding . . . often leads to the owner getting nailed during construction for numerous extra charges by a builder intent on making up for the too low price he had to submit to win the job in the first place”.
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