Chapter 3 — Further Reading

Everything below is a real organization, standard body, or publication. Where I am not certain of an exact document title or edition, I describe the resource rather than inventing a citation — you should hold every source you use to the same standard. Nothing here is legal advice, and delivery-method authorization, procurement rules, and contract enforceability vary by jurisdiction and change over time. Check dates and check your own state.

1. Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) — the primary resource if you want to understand design-build properly. DBIA publishes a family of design-build contract documents, maintains a body of design-build best practices, and runs the DBIA certification program. Its material on progressive versus competitive design-build, on writing owner's criteria, and on qualifications-based and best-value selection is the most developed treatment available in one place. For: anyone who will ever propose on, or buy, design-build work. Start with their best-practices material before their contract documents.

2. AIA Contract Documents — the most widely used standard agreement family in U.S. building construction. The AIA publishes distinct agreement families for different delivery methods and pricing structures — among them owner-contractor agreements for stipulated sum and for cost of the work with a guaranteed maximum price, a construction-manager-as-constructor family, a construction-manager-as-adviser family, a design-build family, and the general conditions document that most of them incorporate by reference. Read them for structure and function: which document pairs with which delivery method, what the general conditions allocate, and where the modifications go. For: every construction manager. You will administer these your whole career.

3. ConsensusDocs — the coalition-drafted alternative. Drafted by a coalition of industry associations including owner, contractor, subcontractor, and surety organizations rather than by a single professional body. Worth reading precisely because the drafting constituency differs from the AIA's, and the default risk allocations differ accordingly. Comparing the two families on the same issue — notice requirements, differing site conditions, contingency administration — teaches more about risk allocation than any textbook chapter, including this one. For: readers who want to see how drafting authorship shapes defaults.

4. EJCDC (Engineers Joint Contract Documents Committee) — the engineering-led family. Produced by a committee of engineering professional societies, and predominant on water, wastewater, utility, and heavy civil work where the engineer rather than the architect is the lead design professional. If you work in infrastructure, this is the family you will actually see. For: heavy civil and municipal utility practitioners.

5. Construction Management Association of America (CMAA) — the reference for agency CM and owner-side practice. CMAA publishes a standards-of-practice framework for construction management and administers the Certified Construction Manager (CCM) credential. Its material is the clearest available articulation of what a CM as agent actually owes an owner, which is the least well-understood role in this chapter. For: anyone working owner-side or considering the CCM.

6. Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) — the contractor's-side view of delivery and risk. AGC produces practical guidance for contractors on delivery methods, subcontracting, project delivery selection, and risk management, and collaborates on the ConsensusDocs family. Its guidance on preconstruction services and on GMP administration is written for people who have to do the work rather than adjudicate it. For: contractors and CMs at risk.

7. Lean Construction Institute (LCI) — the source for IPD behavior, target value design, and pull planning. LCI is the organizing body for lean construction practice in North America and the home of the Last Planner System. Most of what makes IPD work — target value design, big-room co-location, pull planning, transparent cost models — originated or matured here, and all of it can be applied inside a CM-at-risk contract. Read it alongside Chapter 27 when you get there. For: anyone who wants IPD's benefits without IPD's contract.

8. FIDIC (International Federation of Consulting Engineers) — for anyone working internationally. FIDIC's contract suite is the international standard, and its principal books map recognizably onto the delivery methods in this chapter — a traditional design-bid-build-style arrangement where the employer supplies the design, a design-build/plant arrangement where the contractor designs, and a turnkey/EPC arrangement with a heavier risk transfer to the contractor. If you leave the U.S. market, FIDIC vocabulary is the vocabulary. For: international practice.

9. Your own state's public procurement statutes and your state DOT's design-build program. — the single highest-value hour you can spend on this chapter. Whether design-build and CM at risk are authorized for public work — and for which agencies, above which thresholds, with what justification and approval requirements — is a matter of state law that has changed repeatedly over the past three decades and continues to change. State departments of transportation are usually the most mature public users of alternative delivery and frequently publish their program manuals, sample RFPs, and criteria documents publicly. For: everyone. Read your own jurisdiction's, and write down the date you read it.

10. Construction Industry Institute (CII) — for research rather than practice guidance. A research consortium of owner and contractor member organizations based at a major U.S. university, producing empirical research on front-end planning, project delivery selection, and project performance. Useful when you need something more rigorous than trade-press assertion. Note that much of its output is member-restricted; check what is publicly available before you plan a research project around it. For: graduate students and anyone building an internal business case.

11. Engineering News-Record (ENR) — for market context and current disputes. ENR's ongoing coverage of alternative delivery, public procurement reform, and large-project disputes is the fastest way to see how these methods behave in the field in your region and in the current market. Read it for pattern recognition, not for doctrine. For: everyone, weekly, for the rest of your career.

12. Any publicly posted design-build request for proposals. — the best free training material in this chapter. State transportation departments, university systems, and federal agencies routinely post complete RFPs including the owner's criteria or performance specification. Reading one against case study 2 — hunting for every adequate, suitable, industry standard, and as required — will teach you more about design-build risk in ninety minutes than any summary can. For: anyone about to write, price, or evaluate a criteria document.

A note on how to read contract documents

Do not read a standard agreement front to back the first time. Read it in this order, because this is the order in which it will hurt you:

1. The scope and price articles — what am I obligated to deliver, and for what.
2. The changes article — how does the price move, who can direct a change, and what happens if I proceed without a written directive.
3. The notice provisions — every deadline, for every kind of claim. These are jurisdictional, they are short, and courts enforce them.
4. The time and delay articles — what is excusable, what is compensable, and whether "no damages for delay" appears.
5. The payment article — pay-when-paid versus pay-if-paid, retention, and the conditions precedent to payment.
6. Everything else.

Then read the modifications the owner has made to the standard form, which are usually in a supplementary conditions document and are where the real risk allocation lives. A standard form is a starting position. Nobody signs one unmodified.

Appendix G works through the twenty-five clauses that decide who pays. Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 build the framework you need to read them well.