Contractors and Architects: Why Can’t We Just Get Along?
Date Posted: November 15, 2019
Posted In: Discussion, Workforce,
From Construction Citizen: In a Construction Dimension article from 1998 titled The Architect, the Contractor and the Lost Art of Communication (A Contractor’s Viewpoint), S.G. Saucerman said of architects, “If you’ve been a contractor for a while (like me), it’s likely that you’ve come in contact with an architect. This likelihood increases further if you tend to do a lot of commercial work, where indeed it can be hard to swing a dead cat without hitting an architect.”
In a July 2019 article from the same publication titled The Architect: Friend or Foe?, author Ulf Wolf says of relationships with architects: “a clear case of ‘can’t live with them, can’t live without them…”
Clearly the relationship between architects and contractors is complex, and at times, during the design and build, controversial or confrontational. Obviously, when it works, it works and when it doesn’t, it can really “go south” with the owner and the rest of the build team paying the price both literally and figuratively.
Phil Bernstein, FAIA, RIBA, LEED AP, associate dean and senior lecturer at the Yale School of Architecture, and an Autodesk fellow is currently writing a series of articles in Architect Magazine that addresses the issue of architect/contractor conflict and summarizes ways that he found from those Autodesk workshops and conversations to make the relationships much smoother. The articles are summaries based on interviews and conversations in six sessions sponsored by Autodesk with 100 owners, contractors, and architects from around the globe.
In the first of the articles, he explains the basic definitional contractional difference in this way:
By tradition, contract, or legal standard, architects and engineers are not charged with creating “construction-ready” information but rather with what is called in legal parlance “design intent deliverables,” which describe the end-state of construction prior to the instantiation of the contractor’s knowledge. (Construction strategy, means and methods, material selections, and specific detailing often manifest in shop drawings.) It’s not the intent here to argue the efficacy of this particular structural process challenge, but rather to suggest that as digital tools are built—bespoke—for different players in the AEC supply chain, these tools will, absent larger theories of new interactions and standards, be, by definition, incompatible.
From the other side of the table, it is said that:
“Architects (and too many others) view construction as a commodity. They believe that purchasing construction services is like buying a car, you’ll get the same thing no matter what dealer you visit, the only difference is the price.” “Architects used to know about construction and design, based on actual experience. That’s not the case any longer.”
There is another view of architecture expressed by architect, designer, and founder of Ted Talks, Richard Saul Wurman, FAIA, RIBA, who says of the profession in a recent interview in ArchDaily:
I miss architecture. My goal in life was to be a great architect. I love architecture, but I do not love, like, or tolerate the accident of a client, or what they might want me to do. I don’t like being told what to do, I instead like to discuss what to do. I am convinced that a good client can make a building much better, but you are also owned by your client, and I don’t think I’m making any great headlines by saying that. The frustration of even the most famous architects is that they work for a client, and that they spend a lot of time coddling and pleasing the client. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have clients. What I’m saying is that you can’t control your client, and that it takes up a major part of your day and life.
Furman expresses the thought of many architects that not just the contractors, but owners also get in the way of the architect’s vision.
You can see that there is a tremendous opportunity for the architect and the contractor to miscommunicate and at the same time there is a tremendous opportunity for productive partnerships.