Fall 2021

NSPE Today
New EJCDC Series Addresses Construction Management

The Engineers Joint Contract Documents Committee has released a brand new series of documents for projects in which the owner’s primary representative during construction will be the construction manager as advisor.

The new documents, the Construction Manager as Advisor Series, are available on NSPE's EJCDC webpage.

The CM as Advisor Series is an alternative to the use of the EJCDC Construction Series, in which the engineer that prepared the design subsequently serves as the owner’s construction contract administrator. The CM as Advisor Series is comprised of contract documents, administrative forms, and documents for bonds, bidding, and procurement.

In the most common and traditional framework for design-bid-build project delivery, the design professional provides not only design services, but also construction contract administration services as the owner’s primary representative during construction. The new CM as Advisor Series serves the needs of projects in which the design professional focuses on core design and technical services—including engineering services that are required during the construction phase, such as technical review of shop drawings—while a construction manager assists the owner with administrative tasks such as budgeting, scheduling, and quality management.

Several factors inspired EJCDC’s development of the new set of documents:

• First and foremost, many infrastructure projects are very complex, often involving multiple construction contracts over a period of years, creating the need for highly specialized administrative services provided by construction management professionals.
• Some public owners are required by local rules to use a third-party (other than the engineer of record) to administer construction contracts, while other owners prefer the third-party approach as standard operating policy.
• In other cases, a construction manager’s expertise in areas such as scheduling, cost estimating, value engineering, and procurement can be beneficial during the preconstruction phase.
• Some project owners conduct construction contract administration using internal construction management teams. In these cases, the delineation of services and responsibilities in the EJCDC CM as Advisor Series will be useful as a starting point in setting up appropriate administrative procedures and establishing the construction contracts as well as in crafting the scope of the engineer of record’s construction-phase services.

EJCDC is made up of NSPE, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the American Council of Engineering Companies.