Reprinted from May 2008 Brickerconstructionlaw.com

Challenges. If you are a public owner or you represent public owners, you know that you continuously face the challenges of money, time and quality. Why do you continuously face these challenges? Because:

• You have a fixed budget with little or no room to pay for someone else’s mistakes;

• You are often contracting with a group of players that has never worked together before as a team on a construction project;

• You sometimes hire contractors that fail to provide quality work and leave a trail of broken buildings, waste water plants, or sewers that do not work right and then deny responsibility for their mistakes;

• All too often you contract with bidders submitting a low bid to get the job, whose intent is to make their profit on unwarranted change orders and claims;

• All too often you end up signing form contracts that are drafted by and designed to protect someone other than yourself, e.g., the design professional or the contractor;

• You almost always play on an uneven playing field where every other party with which you contract has more knowledge than you do about the construction process; and

• Once you enter into a contract you are, to a great extent, at the mercy of a contractor that has greater knowledge than you do and now has a monopoly on performing the work.