Today in the Top 10 Changes to the A201, we are discussing Termination for Convenience provisions.  (Yesterday’s post discussing contract changes dealing with commencement & completion is here).  The Termination for Convenience provision (14.4.3) has an interesting history which explains why this small, but very specific, change was made.

Termination for Convenience, an exclusive owner right, was added in the AIA contracts in 1997.  However, contractors and architects were losing the benefit of their bargains, including the fixed overhead and the fee or profit on the portion of Work which was terminated.

To alleviate that problem, in 2007, the contracts were revised to allow the contractor/architect to get payment for work executed, costs of termination, and reasonable overhead and profit on the work not executed.

As many of you know too well, Owners, in response, often completely struck through that provision, denying any overhead or profit for work not yet performed after a termination for convenience.

In the 2017 revision, the A201 (as well as the related Owner-Architect agreements), the automatic entitlement is eliminated, in favor of a fill point to prompt the parties to discuss a fair fee before the project begins.

A negotiated amount also serves to liquidate the Owner’s liability to the Contractor (lost business opportunity and overhead and profit on the Contractor’s unperformed work).  However, the fee is not necessarily designed to completely liquidate the Owner’s liability to the Contractor’s downstream parties.

To protect the Owner from downstream claims, the A401 will need to be edited and coordinated, so that the Owner’s entire liability to the Contractor, inclusive of subcontractors and suppliers, is established in the Termination fill point.

Likewise, if you utilize subconsultants in your architecture or engineering practice, be sure that your contracts are likewise modified to track your entitlement for termination expenses.

Tomorrow, Change #2, dealing with Digital Data.

Photo (c) TaxRebate.org.uk via Creative Commons.