Coronavirus Impact on Private Construction Contracts — AIA, ConsensusDocs and DBIA!
Contractor Rights • Owner Rights • Time Extensions • Lost Productivity
While we hope the pandemic dies down quickly, the industry is drifting into the choppy seas of Force Majeure situations. There are multiple questions on everyone's mind, both for contracts underway as well as contracts not yet awarded or signed.
In any force majeure situation, there are numerous possible effects on a project, as well as resulting time and cost impacts. There are major open questions about how to handle these situations and what actions contractors and owners should take. Mitigation steps are universally paramount, but what are the cost and time recovery remedies that may be available?
This recorded webinar, by recognized experts in the field, reviews the various scenarios and questions about how the Coronavirus might affect your construction projects, including…
- No effect on project – i.e., remote site, no one’s traveled to the site in the past few months.
- No effect on project personnel, but possible delays to supplies and materials; not yet determined if critical path delays or not. May or may not have price escalations.
- Minor effect – some individuals, or even trades, don’t show up for work. Possible productivity issues.
- Major effect – individuals and/or trades not able to work – critical path delays expected.
- Project shutdown due to government mandates to stay home (constructive suspension).
- Project shutdown due to owner-directed shutdown. (Directed suspension of work of unknown duration. Possibly compensable?)
- Other scenarios – existing or new delays – will Coronavirus serve the purpose of concurrent delay to relieve either LDs or deny contractor of compensable delay.
- In addition, there are other practical considerations that need to be addressed, including...
Review steps to take immediately to mitigate impacts.
- Learn who's going to pay your employees.
- Determine when/how do give notice of delay. What should it say?
- Consider if you should show delay on the critical path. If submitting monthly CPM updates, how should Covad-19 be shown in the schedule?
- Understand how to account for actual or potential productivity slowdowns in the schedule.
- Be prepared to deal with contracts currently or soon-to-be bid, negotiated, awarded or awaiting notice to proceed.
YOUR PRESENTERS:
Robynne Thaxton, JD, FDBIA Robynne is an attorney and consultant with Thaxton Parkinson PLLC. She served for seven years on the National Board of Directors of the Design-Build Institute of America and has been on the DBIA Northwest Region Board since 2004. She has been active on the DBIA Contracts Committee that drafts and revises DBIA’s form documents since 2008 and is the primary author of the DBIA Form RFQ and RFP as well as the DBIA Teaming Agreement. She is a member of the Washington State Capital Projects Advisory Review Board and is a Fellow of DBIA’s Designated Design-Build professionals. Robynne primarily represents public owners in drafting their procurement documents and contracts for design-build projects. Her clients include states, universities, municipalities, public utility districts, airports, and federal entities.
Brian Perlberg, Senior Counsel for construction law & contract documents at The Associated General Contractors (AGC) of America, Inc., he serves as AGC’s lead in-house attorney for construction law and contract matters. He also serves as the executive director & counsel for ConsensusDocs, a coalition of 40+ construction organizations dedicated to drafting best practice construction contracts. Brian serves on the ABA Forum on the Construction Industry Steering Committee for the Contract Documents, National Construction Dispute Resolution Committee of the Arbitration Association of America, the Advisory Board to Construction SuperConference and WPL Publishing.
Jonathan Pray, Shareholder and Deputy General Counsel with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP, regularly advises clients on the drafting and negotiation of construction contracts for public and private projects and provides advice to project participants over the course of construction — all with the goal of helping his clients resolve disputes and avoid litigation altogether.
Gather your team and listen to the recorded webinars together and then discuss how the content shared in the webinar pertains to your particular company. -- Perfect Training Opportunity!
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