Thursday / November 29, 2018 / 12:00 PM - 1:40 PM
Legal Considerations for the Architect Before, During, and After the Project
AIA Chicago, 35 East Wacker Drive, #250, Chicago
In this competitive marketplace, architects and design professionals must handle legal issues in highly complex projects, with often truncated fast-paced construction schedules, while balancing various project participants and, of course, the client-owner. How can architects play a lead role in communicating the project’s legal framework in order to help achieve this delicate balance?
Architects must also be proactive in using best practices during the all-important contracting phase to head off challenges presented by continuous changes to both the design and the schedule. How can architects develop legal agreements with owners and other project participants that will help avoid potentially significant consequences, if not liability, when things go wrong?
This presentation will discuss the "pain points" in the collaborative construction process and how architects can learn to deploy best practices to address them by engaging all parties in the early project framing stage. We will present and discuss an overview of techniques – from using AIA Forms and modifications to present clear contractual terms that appropriately allocate risk and responsibility across the project teams to learning how to handle issues, problems, and claims when they arise during a project (or long after the project is over).
- Learning Objective 1: Upon completion, participants will be able to distinguish between a “good” contract that can set expectations with the owner, properly define scopes of work, and appropriately allocate responsibility among the project team, as compared to a “bad” contract that will inevitably doom a project at its inception.
- Learning Objective 2: Upon completion, participants will be able to identify, evaluate and proactively take actions with respect to the architect’s project obligations that can help prevent or mitigate the various legal risks that can arise during the construction phase of a project.
- Learning Objective 3: Upon completion, participants will learn how to strategically develop dispute resolution terms and be able to utilize proven dispute resolution methodologies to help manage and resolve construction claims and disputes without the need for protracted litigation.
- Learning Objective 4: Participants will learn about the most important issues to address to help keep all parties on track when schedules and budgets are pressed. Participants will learn what to do, however, when things go wrong, with respect to preparing, prosecuting, or defending claims for delay, defects, extra work, cost overruns, nonperformance, default, interference and acceleration. Participants will also learn about trends in the insurer’s role in construction disputes.
Bring your lunch; beverages and dessert provided.
Speaker: Daniel Dorfman is chair of the Construction Law Practice at Fox Swibel in Chicago. With over a decade of experience in the construction industry, Daniel has handled construction matters exceeding $1 billion in project value for some of the most recognizable projects in the country. He represents local and national owners/developers, design and construction professionals, both on the front end in drafting and negotiating complex construction agreements and on the back end in commercial construction disputes. In addition, Daniel represents policyholders, both within and outside of the construction industry, in insurance coverage disputes.
