The Responsibilities of Design/Build

When you choose to provide design/build services for your clients, you might discover a freedom in the ability to create your own designs. What you must recognize is that there is additional responsibility that comes along with that freedom.

The joy of no longer answering to architects might be intoxicating, but the responsibilities that you now take on can sober you up in short order. No longer can you pass along the responsibility for design or structural problems to others. You will find out quickly that the buck now stops with you.

When you find yourself in this situation, it is critical to understand the limits of you and your employees. Issues will arise that might be new to you: life-safety codes, zoning requirements, structural design issues and many others. What will you do when you uncover a design flaw during construction? As a remodeler, you have probably run across these problems in the past, and you might well be perfectly capable of handling them. What is important to acknowledge and plan for is the potential losses you could incur if you run into a big problem in a design/build project.

Most architects carry errors and omissions insurance. Similar to malpractice insurance, this helps cover the cost of correcting problems resulting from their mistakes. If you build a project according to someone else's plans and there is a structural problem, they can be held responsible for the repairs. Are you ready to take on that responsibility for the projects you design yourself? If you had such a problem, could you afford to bear the cost to correct it? These are important questions to ask when considering providing design/build services.

Aside from the structural and legal issues the design/build firm confronts, customer satisfaction and aesthetic issues arise. You must be able to explain your designs to clients so that they really understand what they are getting and then deliver to them what you promised. At a contract signing recently, during a discussion about details of the project, my client asked me if she would be totally happy with the job. My response was that I couldn't guarantee she would be "totally happy" with the work, only that I promised to build what the plans and the contract said I would. It was incumbent on me to make sure she understood what she was getting, and it was her responsibility to make sure she would be happy with what she was getting.

One issue that can arise in design/build is the sudden reappearance of discarded design ideas. You and your client can have different recollections of design decisions, and there is the potential for conflict if during or at the end of a project the owner is expecting certain features that were not included but had been discussed during the process. It is critical that the owner understand what is in the job, and even more important what is not in the job anymore.

Finally, when taking full responsibility for a project, it is critical to define any exclusions from your contract. The key here is to make sure you have either included or specified clearly as not included any work that a design professional would be expected to have knowledge of, such as egress requirements, lot coverage limitations, and other code compliance and structural issues. If you do not make it clear in your contract, you could easily find yourself in the position of providing free services to your client simply because you did not define the limitations of your work.