Typically, the first professional entity retained by a public owner at the conception of a construction project is either the project architect or the project engineer. The task of preparing the necessary construction documents, including the professional contracts, general conditions, specifications, and agreements with contractors, is a task fulfilled by the design professional. Oftentimes the design professional will counsel against the retention of a construction manager for the project.

Public owners should give serious consideration to the use of a construction manager on any significant construction project, and particularly on those projects where multiple prime contractors are required (or desired) to be used. In a multiple prime project, each prime contractor holds its contract with the owner directly, but otherwise has no contractual relationship with the other primes. While the general conditions of contract may require the primes to cooperate with one another, and oftentimes place the responsibility of coordination of the work among the primes upon the contractor for the general construction work, the individual prime contractors typically lack the contractual authority to enforce those obligations. Consequently, where disputes arise regarding the coordination of the work among the primes, the contractors will look to the owner for direction and resolution. Failure to address these issues when they arise either directly, or indirectly by informing the primes to work it out among themselves, will invariably lead to one or more claims at the close of the project. On a multi-million dollar project with multiple primes, each such claim could in and of itself be several million dollars. Moreover, coordination issues can serve to undermine the progress of all the work on a project, threatening the anticipated completion date for the project, or even worse, bringing the project to a screeching halt.

Among other roles that a construction manager serves, perhaps one of the most important is actively managing the work of each of the prime contractors to ensure appropriate coordination and adherence to the project schedule. Many public owners are ill-equipped, either by way of manpower or experience, to render without assistance determinations on coordination issues, or otherwise to enforce, on a daily basis, the project scheduling requirements. Construction managers fill that void, and through daily contact and oversight on the project, provide assistance to public owners in recommending appropriate courses of action to resolve such disputes and maintain adequate progress on the project.

The services provided by a construction manager are not universal, but rather are customized to a particular project. The construction manager can simply advise the owner of what course of action to take. In contrast, the construction manager can be assigned the authority to issue directives and reach resolutions of disputes as they arise without significant owner involvement. Although the hiring of a construction manager entails additional cost to the owner, those costs can be insignificant compared to the costs involved in addressing claims by contractors where coordination becomes an issue, or the costs associated with a delay to the completion of a project.

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Mr. Winfield is the Administrative Chair of Rhoads & Sinon LLP’s Construction Law Group. If you have questions regarding a planned or existing public project, or have suggestions for future article topics, you may reach Mr. Winfield at (717) 237-6703, or by e-mail at mwinfield@rhoads-sinon.com.