Contract documentation

4. Who

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4.1 Preparers

Proactive documentation is produced by the employer’s team of designers (in house or contracted). Most employers engage consultants (and/or contractors) for design and documentation, but some have building design professionals in-house.

Reactive documentation is produced by or for the contract administrator, and by the contractor and subcontractors.

The contract administrator is typically the architect, and operates as an agent of the employer, looking after its design interests, but is also supposed to neutrally manage the contract (as a whole). This can lead to difficulties when defects in the architect’s own documents become apparent, for example, or if the employer is recalcitrant, e.g. over prompt payment of claims. But the system works pretty well most of the time.

Sometimes the contract administrator is not the same entity that prepared the documents. This has its advantages, and its disadvantages (e.g. loss of continuity of understanding of design intent). The documents are even more important in these circumstances, e.g. to ensure that design intent is properly communicated.

Documentation produced by the ‘contractor’ is, by and large (like the construction work itself), prepared by the subcontractors, but overseen by the contractor. Contractors are managers and fairly hands-off these days.

4.2 Integrators

Building design and documentation is multi-disciplinary, involving (for example)

• architects, structural and civil engineers, services engineers, landscape architects, interior designers, estimators, project managers; and
• acoustics, energy, access and sustainability consultants.

Each of the disciplines has its own priorities. A neutral overseer is needed to integrate and balance the input. Accordingly an integrator is appointed, usually the architect. This person

• integrates design; and
• integrates documentation.

Some would argue that the architect is not neutral at all! But again, by and large the system works well. Architects, though, need to have some training in each of the other disciplines, so as to better understand their design concerns and contributions. Multifunctional products (e.g. integrated photovoltaic cladding systems), and interdependence between fabric and services for achievement of environmental goals, will only increase this need for cross-training.

The project manager is interested in integration of management, rather than design and documentation. Design and documentation for some projects, such as engineering refits, will be led by the services engineer, and others may be led by other disciplines.

4.3 Users

Building contract documentation has many users, and many uses. It isn’t just used for construction:

• Designers: As a design record.
• Authorities, planners, building control officers: As evidence of compliance.
• Estimators: During design, documentation etc.
• Tenderers: During tendering.
• Contractors, employers: As a contractual document.
• Trades, contract administrator: Ordering products, and on site.
• Arbitrators, courts: Serious disputes, if any.
• Facility managers: After building handover.

Because each user has a different interest, different versions of the documents are sometimes prepared for each of them. But because this requires a lot of resources, single general purpose versions of the documents are usually produced, which don’t actually suit anybody perfectly!

Increasing use of computers will eventually allow each user to interrogate the project’s object-oriented database for the information they want. While this is a long way down the track, work on the Building Information Model (BIM) has begun. The project model will be fully integrated, rather than dis-integrated as we see with conventional documentation, in which the drawings, the specification, the bills, the contract are not ‘talking’ to each other at all.

4.4 Key points

Proactive documentations is prepared by the employer's team of designers.

Reactive documentation is prepared by the contract administrator, contractor and subcontractors.

Documentation needs to be integrated, by a neutral overseer, typically the architect.

Documentation has many users, including authorities, estimators, contractors and the courts.

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