When signing off on a change order, contractors may reserve the right to seek some additional increased costs that may be incurred as a result of the change. Sometimes referred to as “carve-outs,” these reservations are interpreted narrowly. The contractor only reserves the rights it expressly defined.
A contractor signed a bilateral contract modification that reserved the right to seek “any time extension due to the changed work, and resulting increased cost.” The contractor did not seek a time extension, instead electing to accelerate the pace of the work in order to avoid winter work conditions. The contractor could not recover the cost of acceleration.
The second case in this issue involves the mechanic’s lien rights of an unpaid architect. The architect did not have a contract with the property owner and did not provide any services on site. The architect had no recourse.
The third case addresses a situation in which the contract documents described subsurface conditions through test boring logs, but warned of “local variations.” This effectively placed the risk of certain undisclosed, latent conditions with the contractor.
