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Covid19's effect on contracts?

Huntmaster

Boob Inspector
Joined
May 24, 2020
Member Number
1333
Messages
178
Loc
Middle of nowhere
With all that has happened with the shut down of our country, what does it mean for the future of contracts?

I spent several years in commercial construction, and if I remember right, the standard AIA contract does not mention anything about 'acts of god', or anything of the type. I'm curious how many projects didn't get completed on time, and how many of those tried to collect liquidated damages. Were they successfull? Without room in a contract for something like this, how do you accept a contract for future delivery? Now wording in contracts will need changed, and then you'll always have people trying to still use the old ones without any extenuating circumstances clause.



Anyone know of one of these? There has to be incomplete contracts due to the beer flu. What happened?
 
Contract wording is changing. I haven't signed a contract as a sub since this started, but there has been talk of adding clauses to cover pandemics on jobs with liquidated damages.

I have one project that started last year and ends this July that has liquidated damages of $1500/day. The GC for that project has not let off the gas at all through all of this. They are expecting everyone to keep crews manned 100% and stay on schedule. When the brickies were gone for a few days due to fears of covid, the GC brought in another contractor and back-charged them. As a side note, this particular project has over 100 tradesmen on it from multiple states and nobody has gotten sick....

There is one contract project I've started since March as a GC. It's a secured access project for a school with 3 subs. I added a clause requesting lead times on materials asap to identify any Covid related delays, and stipulating that the subs need to man the project regardless of the pandemic. It was obviously more wordy with a bunch of "therefore's" and other bullshit legal mumbo jumbo, but that was the gist of it. :laughing:
 
I wonder how division 10,11 and 12 are getting on? I'm not sure how manufacturing was effected, but I can see it making a big problem for those trades
 
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