Understanding Construction Contracts

Learning Objectives

• To identify different types of construction contracts.
• To analyze strategies to determine if you are using the right type of contract.
• To discuss what needs to change to make contracts stronger.
• To discuss with the legal department the necessary changes.
• To analyze why legal sign-off may not be good enough.

Course Description

This webinar is a part of the Construction Audit Series by Denise Cicchella!

US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that as of January 2020, there were $7.59M people working in the construction industry. In addition, data from the Association of General Contractors of America shows that the construction industry has more than 600,000 employers in the US and creates nearly $1.3 trillion worth of structures each year. 

A construction contract is an agreement between a client who wants construction done and a general contractor. This type of contract details the contractor's scope of work, including their right to subcontract any of the work, how and what they will charge for the work, and any applicable plans or work orders.

A strong construction contract should outline the scope of the project in as much detail as possible to leave little to no room for confusion on either side. This type of contractor often includes individual documents that detail the various aspects of the project, such as who will be responsible for performing certain tasks, the expected project timeline, payment terms, and cost requirements.

Reading a construction contract can be a long-drawn-out process. Understanding what you read can be just as hard. This CPE webinar will give you the basics so you can understand the contracts. We will also look at the risk of using template contracts and teach you how to change the wording to give you more control.  

The following are the major topics covered in this CPE Auditing course:

• Construction contracts
• Construction documents
• Types of construction contracts
• Templates of construction contracts

Overview

• Standard contracts are not as great as you think

  4 mins
• Types of contracts

  13 mins
• Right to Audit and Subrogate

  31 mins
• Documents and destructuion

  60 mins
• Drug testing

  86 mins
• What is Dispute Resolution

  106 mins