Monthly Archives: March 2016

Architects and Engineers benefit from a rule in construction known as The Economic Loss Doctrine, limiting a design professional’s exposure in construction claims. The players in a construction project dispute are required to follow the “chain of contracts” that the owner, construction manager, general contractor, subcontractors and design professionals signed before beginning their work. In a recent case, however, Community College of Philadelphia v. Stantec Architecture & Engineering, a jury awarded the College $5.5 million for breach of contract and professional negligence. The College alleged that Stantec used unlicensed designers and engineers, fell behind in their proposed schedule of completion of contract documents and relied too heavily of the RFI process to callout conflicts in the contract documents. The net result was alleged to have resulted in delays and increased costs of more than 50% over the College’s budget. What is unusual in this case is that the jury looked at the pre-contract construction schedule and proposal supplied by Stantec in their response to the College’s RFP as a basis for liability. Stantec’s proposal indicated that they would use “experienced professionals” and “senior level professionals”, when in fact interns from Drexel University were used as well as unlicensed architects. Less experienced employees were used particularly in the position of Project Architect. In-house MEP engineers were touted in the proposal to save costs, but in fact these services were contracted out. Adding to the confusion was the use of multiple prime contractors for the work resulting in hundreds of disciplinary conflicts, deficiencies, errors and omissions. The take…