Engineer Archives - Page 3 of 10

2014 Engineering Excellence Awards in Wisconsin

By Lynda

All over the country this month, engineers participated in local competitions in honor of Engineering Week 2014. ACEC Wisconsin held one such contest and handed out a number of awards, and we want to recognize those achievements:

R. A. Smith National, Inc.
Drexel Avenue Reconstruction & Oakbrook Center

“Drexel Avenue was in very poor condition. It was annually inundated with floodwaters, could not accommodate projected traffic volumes and did not have any provision for bicycle or pedestrian traffic. As a major connector of Oak Creek and Franklin, the roadway also needed to be updated to allow for redevelopment opportunities and new businesses. R.A. Smith National was chosen as the civil engineer for the project.” Read More

GRAEF
University of Wisconsin LaBahn Arena
& De Pere Riverwalk and Wildlife Viewing Pier

“The LaBahn Arena is located in the heart of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s downtown campus. Designed with the help of GRAEF, the 120,000-square-foot, four-level facility is adjacent to the Kohl Center Arena. The arena houses an ice sheet for men’s and women’s hockey practice and women’s hockey games, as well as team locker rooms for both home and visiting teams.” Read More Continue reading “2014 Engineering Excellence Awards in Wisconsin”

The Additional Insured Conundrum: A/E Firms Face a New and Potentially Growing Liability Exposure

By Lynda

So, you’ve scored a new project! This is a shining moment. The road before you vibrates with the potential for creativity and ingenuity. You receive the contract in your email. Double-click. All you have to do is sign on the dotted line. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Insurance Requirements?

Oh boy. You’d better send this one over to your insurance broker for a quick review.

At lunch, you sketch ideas on the back of your napkin, dying to get started. Buzz! Your phone trembles on the table. It’s your broker and, sadly, she didn’t just give you two big thumbs up. Nope. Turns out, the Insurance Requirements include the following line:

Client shall be named as Additional Insured under CG 20 10 (85) or equivalent.

No-can-do. This endorsement is obsolete. But your new client wants it! And so you’re face-to-face with the eternal and confounding Additional Insured Conundrum.

Does this scenario sound familiar to you? You’re not alone. The following excerpt from our October 2013 issue of ProNetwork News may be able to help:

The Issue

Recent court decisions and increasingly onerous client demands are creating substantial insurance related difficulties for design firms. This article will focus on the potentially hazardous and surprising consequences of adding clients and others as additional insureds to the A/E’s general liability insurance (CGL) policy(s).

A recent Illinois Appellate Court Decision illustrates this threat: Patrick Engineering Inc. (Patrick) v. Old Republic General Insurance Co (Old Republic). The basic facts are:

Patrick was retained by Commonwealth Edison (Com Ed) to provide engineering services in connection with relocation of utility poles. While working on the project, Com Ed smashed through an underground sewer in at least four separate locations. Subsequently, the local municipality, Village of Lombard, sued Com Ed alleging that it acted negligently. Continue reading “The Additional Insured Conundrum: A/E Firms Face a New and Potentially Growing Liability Exposure”

Blog Love: ConstructionRisk.com on YouTube

By Lynda

Tired of reading article after newsletter after white paper after blog post on risk management? (We hope not! But just in case…) Here’s another option:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ioR9X05Qo]

Longtime a/e ProNet affiliate Kent Holland of ConstructionRisk, LLC has translated his impressive catalog of resources into a series of short videos available on the ConstructionRisk.com YouTube Channel.

“If you’re involved in the construction project, whether as a contractor, a designer, or a project owner, you will get real benefit from the practical ideas, suggestions, and law presented in these videos.”

A few of the playlists available now:

J. Kent Holland is a construction lawyer located in Tysons Corner, Virginia, representing design professionals, contractors, and project owners.

Don’t forget the popcorn!

ProNet Practice Notes: Is BIM right for you and your project?

By Lynda

Embracing the latest technology can set a design firm apart from the crowd, but it can also set you up for a rough road if you’re not adequately prepared beforehand. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is far from “new” at this point, but some wary design professionals have abstained from it anyway, allowing time to tell whether BIM would be a positive thing for the industry, overall. Good news!

“Building Information Modeling (BIM)… [has] not necessarily opened the door to more claims, as several carriers expected. A few [insurance companies] have found BIM projects to be low-risk; some even went as far as giving discounts to design clients that utilize BIM.” — Engineering, Inc., February 2014

a/e ProNet’s latest ProNet Practice Note, authored by Joseph Barra of Robinson & Cole, can take you from here. The following is an excerpt from Building Information Modeling (BIM): Now that you know how to spell BIM, is it right for you and your firm?

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the process of developing a virtual, three-dimensional, information rich model to design, construct, and maintain a building project. BIM is much more than software used to produce a pretty 3D graphic. Because a variety of information can be embedded into the model, BIM can also be used to manage the project’s construction schedule (4D); to track project costs (5D); and, once constructed, facility management (6D).

There are varying levels of BIM adoption and use, from an initial pilot project with one player using BIM tools to a team process with agreed-upon collaborative BIM process goals. In ideal process, all project participants share information.

These times are a changin’…

Because BIM is about process and not just software, it gives designers and constructors a unique opportunity to eliminate the barriers to collaborative thinking. One example is found in the redundancies inherent in the shop-drawing process. In this case, the goal of the BIM process is to abolish the wasteful practice of having to draw the entire project twice. Because BIM facilitates teamwork, many see BIM as an opportunity to reach out across disciplines and reconsider the traditional paradigm. Make no mistake, we still need experienced architects, engineers, contractors, and owners to deliver a successful project. But in today’s BIM-enabled world, the process is becoming more collaborative, which in turn redefines the project team’s risk profile.

To continue reading, download the full PDF version of this newsletter, which outlines Factors to Consider before deciding to use BIM (e.g., Type of Project, Timing, Teammates, Project Delivery Method). And if you have additional questions about BIM and/or professional liability insurance, be sure to contact your local a/e ProNet broker today!

Engineering Inc. – 2013 Professional Liability Insurance Survey of Carriers

By Lynda

Incredibly, even the global economic crisis hasn’t hardened the Professional Liability Insurance market for Architects and Engineers. Today, there are more insurance companies offering A&E policies than ever. And, thanks to the increasing insurance savvy of Design Professionals (particularly those utilizing the services of specialist brokers), new Professional Liability insurers are offering more in the way of risk management and pre-claims assistance, too.

You’ll find all this information and more outlined in the The Hard Market That Never Came, an analysis of the 2013 Professional Liability Insurance Survey of Carriers, in the February 2014 issue of Engineering, Inc. Continue reading “Engineering Inc. – 2013 Professional Liability Insurance Survey of Carriers”

The NEW Schinnerer Risk Management Blog

By Lynda

Happy New Year, friends & followers of a/e ProNet! We thought we ‘d take a moment to congratulate our friends over at Victor O. Schinnerer–one of the leading Professional Liability insurance companies in the industry today–on the new, updated Schinnerer Risk Management Blog.

For a number of years, Schinnerer’s Risk Management Blog has been an excellent source of up-to-date industry news. Recent posts have included:

If you’re an Architect or an Engineer or a Design Consultant, whether or not your current professional liability insurance carrier is Victor O. Schinnerer, their blog is a great place to look for answers to your everyday questions about insurance, best practices, and, of course, risk management. These referenced posts on the old blog, so be sure to check out the archive. We also encourage you to subscribe to the new WordPress blog if you find this info relevant to you and your business.

Make sure to contact your local a/e ProNet broker if you’re interested in obtaining a Professional Liability quote from Schinnerer. Have a great 2014!

Wishing all Architects & Engineers a Happy Holiday!

By Lynda

There are few things more beautiful than a city decked out for the Christmas holidays, and for that we thank the architects, engineers, urban planners, and designers. We wish all of our readers, friends, and followers a safe, peaceful holiday. All the best in 2014!

An Unfair Duty to Defend

By Lynda

No engineering project is without risk. Somewhere between the goal of designing the best bridge, building or water treatment facility and running a profitable business lurks the ever-present possibility of litigation. A legitimate disagreement can occur, a company can make a mistake, or a firm or government entity—or a member of the public—can file a lawsuit that forces the firm to defend itself and its work. “A lot of risks exist and they’re not necessarily related to the quality of the work performed,” says John Moossazadeh, a senior vice president at Kleinfelder in San Diego.

Engineering firms often take jobs that knowingly expose the firm to legal risk. But how much risk is too much?

That’s a question that more and more engineering and design firms are asking when confronted with contracts that contain controversial “Duty to Defend” language.

A contractual Duty to Defend provides that the engineering firm will pay for attorney’s fees and costs incurred in a client’s defense of a claim. Depending on the con-tract language and the governing jurisdiction, this duty may be immediate from the time the claim is made, and may exist regardless of whether the engineer is found to be negligent. Although basic indemnification and defense clauses are common, and they typically assign risk to the negligent party, a growing number of developers and agencies request—and, in some cases, demand—that the consultant or firm in charge of the project defend any suit or other legal action brought against the developer or owner, and sometimes even irrespective of whether the claim is related to the engineer’s services.

Duty to Defend provisions are therefore criticized because a consultant or engineer who signs such an agreement could be legally required to bear the cost of defending against any project-related claim, even when the claim has nothing to do with the services performed by the firm, and there’s zero evidence of negligence. “It forces engineers to take responsibility for far more than the work they’re being paid to do and what their insurance covers,” explains P. Douglas Folk, principal at Folk & Associates in Phoenix. Continue reading “An Unfair Duty to Defend”

Architect & Engineer Insurance FAQ: Breach of Contract

By Lynda

Why should I strike “breach of contract” from the indemnity provision in my agreement?

For one thing, it is redundant as there is already a remedy under the law should you breach your contract. Please note the excerpt in the next question from our Practice Notes Vol. 4 NO. 2, Indemnification: How to Identify Unacceptable Risks and Get Them Out of Your Agreements.

What is the significance of the statement in an agreement: “breach of any term or condition of this Agreement”?

Negligence may be difficult to prove, but breach of contract is not. To establish a breach, all an owner need do is prove that 1) you owed a duty to perform under your agreement, 2)you breached that duty, and 3) damages were sustained as a result. This is your client’s fall back position in the event negligence turns out to be impossible to establish. It is also your invitation to the owner to sue you at your expense. There is great leverage in this, and it flows in a single direction-from you to your client. Your client sues you for breach of contract, and you pay the associated attorneys’ fees and costs. Arguably, this is inconsistent with public policy. Public policy generally demands mutuality as a matter of equity where there is an agreement by one party to pay the attorney’s fees of another regardless of the outcome of a dispute between the two. Attorney’s fees are the only issue here, for if you are found to have breached your contract, there is a remedy for that in the law. As far as you are concerned, it is neither necessary, nor is it appropriate for you to add your indemnity to that remedy. Absent negligence your indemnification for breach of contact may be uninsurable; absent mutuality, it is unfair. Delete this language if you can. If you encounter sustained resistance, you might invoke the public policy argument and propose, as an alternative, to substitute language elsewhere in your agreement calling for the non-prevailing party to any dispute to compensate the prevailing party for costs of defense. There is leverage in this for you, but there is also some risk. Seek the advice of counsel before you pursue this strategy.

Excerpted from the FAQ page on the a/e ProNet website, one of many risk management resources for Architects & Engineers. Have any questions? Contact your local a/e ProNet broker or contact us directly today.