One of Maloney & Company’s commitments to our architect and engineer clients is to give them advice and suggestions on managing the risk they take on when providing design services. Among many risk management tips and suggestions, our clients receive a 10 page Contract Review Guide, updated annually.
Q: What if I don’t sign the contract my client gave me? Or if my client doesn’t sign the one I prepared?
by Reade Pizzonia, Account Manager, Maloney & Company, LLC
As 2017 drew to a close, President Trump and the U.S Government agreed upon a new tax policy which went into effect as of January 1, 2018. A few weeks prior to the policy reform getting approved, the policy appeared unlikely to provide a benefit for architects and engineers. However, thanks to representatives ...
Continue Reading →
Vincent Scully lived a long life of influencing architects with his lectures and literature. He was a Yale art historian for over 60 years, and had a decisive influence on the architectural practice in the last half of the 20th century. Scully authored books on Greek temples, Palladio’s villas and the American Indian pueblo, American architecture and urbanism, and many more on ...
Continue Reading →
Architects and engineers planning to start their own firms will ask us about insurance for the new venture. Typically, small firms start with one or more of these three types of policies:
1) Professional Liability Policy
This type of policy pays for legal fees and damage awards connected to an A/E’s design work. This coverage is important because an architect or engineer is personally liable for his or her professional services. There is no way to organize or incorporate to shield yourself ...
Continue Reading →I get a little worried whenever I see a shift in the relationship between architect, owner and contractor because often, when the dust settles, the architect has come out of the process having given up some ground to the others. Change yields both winners and losers.
WINNERS:
1) THE PROJECT OWNER–If you self-certify a project the owner will spend no extra money and get the project completed sooner. If it is a commercial space, the owner will begin making ...
Continue Reading →Attorney Godbout has been recognized by Super Lawyers and has been named to the 2016 Connecticut Super Lawyers in the practice area of Professional Liability: Defense. He has also been rated AV-Preeminent by his peers through Martindale-Hubbell. The account managers at Maloney & Company, LLC frequently meet with Attorney Godbout to discuss trends in the A&E industry and new risk management techniques. This week, the statute of limitation and ...
Continue Reading →#1 is pretty clear cut, and is easy enough to avoid. But you and your employees should be on your guard against #2. If your contract specifically excludes site safety responsibility (as it should), and the owner-contractor contract specifically includes site safety responsibility (as it should), then you must leave this duty ...
Continue Reading →There are many ways to structure a design/build project, but most often an architect or engineer (A/E) will design a building, then retain the trades directly. This way, the A/E has control over the full construction value of the project, not the 3%-12% they usually get for the design alone. When an A/E takes responsibility for construction and subs out 100% of the “work,” we call that A/E a “Paper GC” since the A/E won’t actually get out and swing ...
Continue Reading →
According to Travelers Business Risk Index 2015, cyber risks are the number one concern overall for professional firms. Just one virus or resourceful hacker can cause huge financial and reputational consequences for a design firm, and that’s why it is important to be prepared with the right coverage.
Here is a claim scenario: A design firm stored its customers’ information in a third-party cloud computing environment which suffered a major data breach, compromising the information of thousands of the firm’s customers. ...
Continue Reading →
Created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance, National Cyber Security Awareness Month was created to help increase awareness about cyber threats and security measures.
The Federal Trade Commission recently called ransomware (a type of virus that encrypts data) an “epidemic.” In fact, three of our clients have recently been hit by Ransomware, and a ransom paid ...
Continue Reading →