Mississippi construction law and claims news: the PEER report
Design professionals and their errors and omissions insurers will be warned they really will be required to cover the cost of change orders resulting from design omissions if Mississippi's Bureau of Building accepts the recommendations made in a recent report by the Mississippi Legislature's PEER Committee.
The Bureau is a unit of the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration and manages most state public building projects.
The PEER Committee is a joint committee of the Mississippi State Senate and Mississippi House of Representatives that conducts state agency performance evaluations and reviews. Last month, PEER issued its Review of the Management of the State Construction Process.
PEER found improvements had been made since its last report on the Bureau in 2002 such as the use of Building Commissioning Agents on projects larger than $3 million.
PEER criticized the Bureau for not making claims against design professionals and their insurers for design omissions and defects and recommended the addition of an "INSURER BEWARE" type warning in architects' contracts:
The Bureau of Building should change its standard design professional contract to state that the bureau’s policy will be to file insurance claims for all change order work that is caused by the professional’s design errors, omissions, or documentation deficiencies and file claims accordingly, unless the professional chooses to pay the contractor directly. Further, the bureau should not pay any additional fees to the professional team for such change orders.
Query--what do you reckon the joint industry commitees working on revising the American Institute of Architects construction contract documents would do with PEER's recommendation?