AIA Document Classes

[aelectricalman]

Does anyone know of a good AIA educational course? Understanding the AIA documents are half of the battle when dealing with owvers on large jobs! Knowing when you are legally entitled to your money is hard to understand, if you don't know the verbage of the "owners" AIA contracts. Feel free to talk about what you've learned dealing with AIA contracts, tips owners use to hold money, oversights of contractors regarding the documents, tips that help collection of money and/or any other information that could be interesting for contractors dealing with AIA contracts.

 

[USMC1302]

You can learn an awful lot just reading through the documents and studying the front end and specs of a project. I would also recommend CSI, Construction Specifications Institute. They have conferences and certification programs(or did) for CDT(construction documents tech, I believe) among others. I worked with that stuff quite a bit, and found most of contractor's issues always seemed to deal with not looking at the specs. There are always some mistakes or ambiguities since most of the specs are cut and pasted from other jobs. Still, if someone takes a little time to read through them, it will save a lot of heartache.

 

[USMC1302]

My biggest problem was trying to get contractor's paid because they didn't have a clue on the pay applications. Again, nothing that difficult, but if you're doing a public works project or one requiring the AIA documents, study up a little and discuss with the A/E Firm or GC if you're working with one. When the AIA documents are used, I like to see the contractor using the PR forms, Change Order and RFI documents. Also, a well thought out Schedule of Values. Usually means these guys have been around the block IMO