4 Vital Contract Documents Needed for Every Construction Project
Constructing a firm contract represents one of the first steps toward the success of your project no matter what you're constructing. The below list explains the documents that are important part of every construction contract. There are also various other exhibits or forms that you can use in combination with these documents.
- Contract Agreements and Contracts
- Necessary Items on a Scope of Work (SOW)
- Identify the contractor's responsibilities
- Defines contract objectives as well as project requirements
- Mentions enough details to estimate labor costs
- Includes a contracting method as well as the payment schedule
- Regulation, outlines standards, and special contract requirements
- Explains all connected tasks, duties, and limitations required to obtain expected results in accordance with the project target.
- General Conditions in Construction Contracting
- The use of Bills of Quantities in building contractor organizations
A construction contract agreement is a document that sets a date and specifies which parties are going to join in the construction procedure. Normally, the contract agreement is executed between the owner of the project and the contractor or supplier that is giving the requested services and contains different sections of clauses mentioning the scope, terms, and conditions of the agreement. It is necessary that you understand the scope of work mentioned in the contract agreement, finish the work as scheduled, and invoice instructed to do so, and lastly it will be the tool used so you can get rewarded.
A properly written statement of work is complete, clear, logical, and concise so that it can be understood easily by both the contractor as well as the construction manager responsible for the administrative portion of the contract. The SOW describes in detail what is expected from the contractor and is used as a measuring tool for the construction manager to make sure that the project deliverables are met. Being a part of this description, a SOW typically:
General conditions are those items that will not be a part of the actual product, once the project has been finalized. The items included under the general conditions are all of those tools, resources, and equipment required to build a project, but indirectly linked to the physical construction activities, and that you can be allowed to be compensated for. This list consist descriptions of some of the most common items you can add in your construction costs. They are different from overhead and profit, even though sometimes supervision can be included. Generally a contract provision will let you have a separate line item that you can use to estimate your general conditions costs, but another option is to extend the costs into multiple items.
The main purpose of the Bill of Quantities (BQ) is to allow all contractors tendering for a contract to price on exactly the same information. Later it is widely used for post-tender work such as: construction planning; material scheduling; cost analysis; and cost planning. Due to the re-work involved in the post-tender use of the BQ, the ‘extent of use’ of the BQ is necessary. The ‘re-work’ means modification, or grouping, or breaking up of data when used for a particular task by a management group. The ‘extent of use’ is the direct use, after subtracting the re-work from the total use. This paper mentions the contractor's current use of the BQ for post-tender work based on case studies, and establishes the ‘extent of use’ thus highlighting the re-working of the bill. Information stored in the BQ should be set in a directly useable way. It is seen that, ‘quantities’, ‘quantity units’, and ‘unit rates’ are the main elements of the BQ information that need to be displayed in a more meaningful format if the amount of re-work is to be reduced.
