What happens when your general contractor (or its subcontractors) mistakenly doesn’t pick-up a condition omitted from one design discipline’s drawing sheets, but that condition is picked up on another’s? We see this frequently where there are inconsistencies or a lack of coordination between disciplines and drawing sheets.
Example: Civil sheets missed a telecom vault with fiber routing into a building, but the telecom sheets have it. The general contract missed this cost, because their underground sub priced only off the civil sheets.
What happens? Well, if the drawings the GMP pricing is based off include the condition on any select sheet(s), then the general contractor is responsible for this cost. At this point, it’s considered a “miss” and Construction Contingency may be utilized to capture that estimating miss. This does not become an Owner Change. If there isn’t enough Construction Contingency remaining, then that’s a bigger, more difficult discussion.
Bottom line: Unless specifically noted as an exclusion, the General Contractor is responsible for “all” contract documents identified by the GMP. This is one key purpose for the inclusion of Construction Contingency.
-By Mike Barbera
