by Brianna Crandall — November 2, 2015—The American Institute of Architects (AIA) recently announced the launch of nine new contract documents. These include a new owner / consultant agreement with two accompanying scope-of-service exhibits for land surveying and geotechnical engineering, as well as six new administrative forms for use on design-build projects.
Owner / consultant agreement
Created in response to the expressed need for a standard form of agreement owners could use to engage necessary consultants and leverage their expertise, the C103–2015, Standard Form of Agreement Between Owner and Consultant without a Predefined Scope of Consultant’s Services, establishes expectations between an owner and consultant on a project. This agreement contains basic business terms related to copyrights and licenses, claims and disputes, termination or suspension, and compensation.
The accompanying scope-of-services exhibits include:
- C201-2015, Standard Form of Consultant’s Services: Land Survey: This exhibit establishes the duties and responsibilities of a surveyor who is hired as a consultant by a property owner, and allows the parties to select between a boundary, topographic, or ALTA/ACSM survey.
- C202-2015, Standard Form of Consultant’s Services: Geotechnical Engineering Services: This exhibit establishes the duties and responsibilities of a geotechnical engineer who is hired as a consultant by a property owner. It separates the geotechnical engineer’s services into four phases: explorations and testing, preparation of a geotechnical report, design services, and construction services.
Both documents are scope-of-services exhibits intended to be attached to AIA Document C103-2015. They may not be used as stand-alone agreements. The AIA worked with both land surveying and geotechnical engineering experts to define the parameters of these documents.
Design-build forms
The AIA has also added six new design-build forms to complete the Design-Build family of documents, which has quickly become one of the most popular document families in the AIA portfolio. The six new documents include:
- G741-2015, Change Order for a Design-Build Project
- G742C-2015, Application and Certificate for Payment for a Design-Build Project, Contractor Variation
- G742S-2015, Application and Certificate for Payment for a Design-Build Project, Subcontractor Variation
- G743C-2015, Continuation Sheet for a Design-Build Project, Contractor Variation
- G743S-2015, Continuation Sheet for a Design-Build Project, Subcontractor Variation
- G745-2015, Change Directive for a Design-Build Project
The new documents are currently available through the latest version of the AIA Contract Documents desktop software, as well as individually through AIA Documents-on-Demand and AIA Documents-on-Demand Plus.
