ASSIGNMENT 06

Sairam Ramisetti
Chapter 13:
3) The difference between Ethical Standards and Ethical Rules in AIA’s Code of Ethics is
 Ethical Standards are no binding, these are specific Ethical goals that the members of the
AIA should aspire to reach and
 Ethical Rules are binding on the AIA members. If a member of AIA breaks a rule then the
member would be immediately subject for disciplinary action by the AIA.
4) As per AIA’s Code of Ethics rule 2.105, if the architect believes that his supervisor’s or client’s
decisions could endanger the safety of the public, then the architect can do either of following
 He can use his authority under the contract to make sure that the correct decision is taken
without involving a local government official. He can take steps to notify all parties of the
wrong decision and try to resolve the matter.
 If those measures don’t work out in resolving the issue, then the architect should report
the matter to the local building inspector, as per AIA Code.
5) As per AIA’s Code of Ethics, the architect has an ethical obligation to accept responsibility for
any delay in performance caused due to lack of clarity in the design rather than blaming it on the
contractor.
7) The seven rules as per Constructor’s Code of Conduct, are:
 A constructor should ensure while giving an advice, the advice should be fair and unbiased.
 The Constructor should maintain full regard to the public interest in fulfilling his or her
professional responsibilities in the construction industry.
 A Constructor should not maliciously or recklessly injure or attempt to injure the
professional reputation of others.
 A Constructor shall not divulge to any person, firm or company, information of a
confidential nature acquired during the course of professional activities.
 The Constructor should not engage in any deceptive practice, or any practice which creates
an unfair advantage for the constructor or another.
 A Constructor shall carry out responsibilities in accordance with current professional
practice and
 A Constructor shall keep informed of new concepts and developments in the construction
process relative to his or her responsibilities.
8)
 Bid Shopping is the practice in which the GC provides the lowest bid submitted to other
subcontractors competing to get the contract in order to get even lower prices or forces the
lowest bidder to reduce the prices further in order to keep the project.
  Bid Rigging is the practice in which the various competitors of the bidding process meet
in advance of the bid and agree on who will win the bid in advance. This is done to
effectively increase the cost of the owner. In this type of practice the contractors often take
turns as to who will win the contract while the others keep the prices high and the profit
margins unusually high. This falsely makes the owner believe that the process is a fair and
open.
Chapter 14:
3) The 4 major advantages of the Design-Bid-Building project delivery system are:
 The owner can select from a wide range of design professionals.
 For inexperienced owners, an independent professional monitoring the work with the
owner’s interest in mind can protect the owner’s contractual rights.
 Subcontracting should produce highly skilled workers with a specialization of labor and
should create more competitive market as it needs less capital to enter.
 Not awarding the contract until the design is complete for the owner to bid more accurately,
making a fixed-price contract unlikely to go up unless there were some design changes
made.
5) ) If the owner feels that the Design-Build project delivery method is not providing him with an
independent designer looking for his specific design interests, the owner can use the “Bridging
Documents”, which involves the owner hiring a design professional doing the preliminary design.
Once Independent design provided early design phase documents and drawings these can be used
to obtain the Request for Proposals from the design-build firms.
10) BIM adoption by the construction industry creating new type of serious legal issues. BIM
project delivery erasing the role based work by removing the distinctions between designer team,
GC, sub-contractor and component supplier through integrated design and construction at each
level of construction making them into one entity without any distinction. It does not provide any
distinction based on responsibility, insurance coverage, or even copyright of the BIM model, thus
exacerbating the problems associated with this fundamental questions without any standard form
of contracts governing the BIM projects. It also means that the major stakeholders of the project
should get into design process and also that the design process must start earlier than other project
delivery systems.
Section III:
a) As per cost plus a fixed fee contract, GC gets reimbursed for all the allowable costs and paid a
fee that will remain fixed whether or not the actual costs exceeds or is less than the estimated costs.
Thus GC entitled to recover additional costs of $300,000 plus incurred on him for the proper
execution of the work. The contract also mentions that the maximum costs would be adjusted
according to change-orders (CO). Thus the GC can also recover the additional costs over the
maximum cost provided by the contract through CO section
b) It was fraternity urgency to rebuild as soon as possible to students are homeless and contractor
over confidence that he manage things later before finalizing the drawings and specifications may
be possible intentions to finalize things at 300000$ without proper study
c) The intentions were definitely different for GC and Owner. The GC in this case exploited frat
house owner lack of technical knowledge and urgency through “Cost Plus fixed fee contract” and
“Change orders”. He anticipated there would be changes which may rise cost but still GC went on
with construction. However, the same cannot be said for the owner as he might not have had the
slightest idea of the contractor’s intentions. The architect should have protected owner interests
and should have guided him properly in this case.