Ask the Architect

The contractor and the architect are squabbling

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Q. We’re having problems with the contractor and the architect now that our work has started. The contractor says the plans are incomplete and don’t show how to build the high ceilings and second-floor addition we want. He says the plans should have shown how to connect the walls and roof, since the wall is curved and very complicated. The work is stopped while they argue about how to do this, since the architect refuses to show the contractor how to do it and the contractor says it can’t be done. What can we do other than fire both of them and get someone else? Who’s right?

A. You’ve been thrown a curve ball with your curved wall and expected the professionals to be able to work this out — and they can. First and foremost, they have to understand their roles in the project. There’s an industry-wide misunderstanding of responsibility and legal decisions, published in professional magazines on a regular basis, explaining these problems, which arise too often. The role of the architect is to plan and detail the building so that it can be built. That doesn’t mean showing the contractor how to build, but instead showing what the outcome is supposed to be. There’s a big difference.

Most architects’ contracts state that the architect is not responsible for “means, methods, and sequences” in carrying out the work during construction. In other words, the contractor has a responsibility, in taking on the job, of planning the method to carry out the work to accomplish the outcome shown in the plans. If he realizes that he’s incapable or the work will be too difficult, he has an obligation not to do the job, or to communicate questions about the intent of the outcome before agreeing to do the work to begin with. When I get the question, “How are we supposed to build this?” — which, fortunately, doesn’t happen very often — I ask (maybe sometimes just to myself) why the contractor took the job if he didn’t know how he was going to accomplish the work. This sounds like what you are experiencing.

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