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ON THE MOVE

THORNTON TOMASETTI ANNOUNCES PRO- MOTIONS The board of directors of Thornton Tomasetti (New York, NY), an international engineering firm, announced the following promotions: NewYork ❚ ❚ Chief Administration Officer: Andrew Goldbaum ❚ ❚ Senior Principal: James Feuerborn Jr. ❚ ❚ Principal: Robert Kornfeld Jr., Scott Lomax, Stephen Szycher ❚ ❚ Associate Principal: Colin Brown, Michael Gerasopoulos ❚ ❚ Vice President: Ali Ashrafi, Michele Becker, Reza Farimani ❚ ❚ Senior Associate: Damon Baumann, Amy Macdonald ❚ ❚ Associate: Vincent Aleo, Austin Allcot, Anita Asokan, Cristian Butnaru, Liling Cao, William Cooch, Armela Dervishi, Michelle Dionisio, Tonia Gotsis, Justin

Gumberich, Onur Ihtiyar, Misael Rojas, Michael So, Luis Valderruten, Zachary Wiegand, Melissa Wong ❚ ❚ Senior Project Engineer: Christina Chu, Ignacio Fernandez Ortega, Efe Karanci, Fengxia Ouyang, Christopher Ward, Boris Weinstein, Natalie Wolfram ❚ ❚ Project Engineer: Patrick Kenny, Karen Nelson, Edwin Yu ❚ ❚ Senior Project Director: Charu Chaudhry, Haider Himairi, Brogan McIlwrick, Odysseas Olysseou, Viviana Vumbaca ❚ ❚ Project Director: Asta Fivgas, Christos Mavroudis, Lauren Millman, Silverio Patrizi, Catherine Wang ❚ ❚ Senior Engineer: Ronald Ademaj, Jason Andrew, BenedetArgento, Virginie Arnaud, Aditya Bhagath, Juan Chen, Scott Cipoletti, Eric Gargiulo, Jason Glenn, Corey Henriquez, Erin Kelly, Ian King, Dmitri Lamianski, Jason Lu, Francis Nagel, Marissa Peragine, Kylie Schalz,

Jennifer Tsang ❚ ❚ Senior Designer: Aikaterini Kefalogianni ❚ ❚ Director of Application Development: Benjamin Howes ❚ ❚ Senior Building Information Modeler: Pinki Changrani, Luz Gault, Adrian Paulino ❚ ❚ SystemAdministrator: Frank Reilly ❚ ❚ Senior Manager of Administrative Services: Lyn Stevens ❚ ❚ Marketing Coordinator: Amanda Spencer Newark ❚ ❚ Vice President: Sergio Londono ❚ ❚ Associate: Bahadir Ekinci ❚ ❚ Project Engineer: Adam Beckmann ❚ ❚ Senior Engineer: Jameson Allen, Benjamin Nichols Boston ❚ ❚ Vice President: Lisa Davey

DAN KNISE , from page 3

While the focus of this article is to point out contract areas of concern, keep in mind that there are also contract provisions that can assist in protecting architects and engineers. These can be important and include mutual waivers of subrogation, limitation of liability, waiver of consequential damages, minimum insurance requirements on other parties (including that the design professional be listed as an additional insured on any contractor general liability policy), etc. The most important step is to recognize that contracts do impact risk and that you need a formal process to review your firm’s proposed contracts and seek changes if need be. Seeking expert advice from your attorney and your insurance broker can also help. At the end of the day, business requires taking some risk in order to reap the rewards. Just be sure your eyes are open and you have a full understanding of your options. DAN KNISE is the president and CEO at Ames & Gough. Contact him at dknise@amesgough.com “There are also contract provisions that can assist in protecting architects and engineers. These can be important and include mutual waivers of subrogation, limitation of liability, waiver of consequential damages, (and) minimum insurance requirements on other parties.”

negligence on the part of the A/E. The phrase “defend” should be struck whenever possible. ❚ ❚ Ownership of documents/reuse. All too often we see con- tracts that allow the client to reuse the project documents and, even worse, do so without any protection for the design professional involved. Preferably, such plans, drawings, and specifications should be considered as “instruments of ser- vice” representing the design professional’s intellectual prop- erty and requiring his/her authorization for any additional use. Additionally, any future use of the documents should be at the client’s risk, and they should hold the design profes- sional harmless from any claims arising from that reuse. ❚ ❚ Construction phase services. Often project owners will at- tempt to require their architect or engineer to “inspect” the project during the construction phase. This implies a higher level of scrutiny and typically includes a requirement to “as- sure the quality of the work” or in some other way guarantee performance of the contractor as to defects and deficiencies (see earlier section on Warranties and Guarantees). Such lan- guage should be avoided and replaced with the more typical “observe the work and exercise reasonable care in determin- ing that it conforms generally to the contract documents.” Separately, be careful about taking on responsibility for site safety. This is a contractor responsibility, and design profes- sionals do not want to inadvertently assume a risk that they don’t control. ❚ ❚ Other provisions of concern. There are a host of other pro- visions that can create unfair or inequitable risk for design professionals. A few that come to mind are consequential damages, certifications, shop drawings, and reliance on own- er-provided information. These too should be reviewed and, if necessary, modified.

EDITOR’S NOTE This column is in response to the “ Firms under fire ” article that ran in THE ZWEIG LETTER, issue 1111, on July 13 . To share your thoughts on or experiences with contract liability or any topic in TZL , please email your comments to Managing Editor Andrea Bennett at abennett@zweiggroup.com .

THE ZWEIG LETTER JULY 20, 2015, ISSUE 1112

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