Teaming, Sub-Consultant Agreements Added to DBIA Standard Contract Forms

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Design-Build Institute of America has released two new contractual forms designed to complement and enrich the family of design-build standard contract forms revised and updated in 2010. The DBIA Standard Form of Teaming Agreement is the only form teaming agreement on the market specifically drafted for design-build.

The new DBIA Standard Form of Agreement between Design Consultant and Design Sub-Consultant acknowledges the important role designers and sub-consultants play within design-build project delivery. Both of the new forms were developed by DBIA's Contract Document Task Force in response to demand from the institute's members and customers and are available through DBIA’s online Design-Build Bookstore.

Like all DBIA contracts, these new documents are written in plain language. Recognizing the need for flexibility, the contracts include options. This menu approach encourages the parties to discuss difficult contractual issues at the outset of the relationship. By providing parties with alternative language within the document, users of DBIA contract documents can customize contracts quickly and economically.

The DBIA Teaming Agreement (Document 580) is intended to be used when the design-builder is the prime contracting party and will subcontract with other parties, such as designers, trade contractors and specialty design-build contractors. The Teaming Agreement was written with the difficult issue regarding enforceability of Teaming Agreements in mind. In addition, the parties may customize provisions related to many concerns, including compensation, termination, ownership of intellectual property and stipends.

The DBIA Standard Form of Agreement between Design Consultant and Design Sub-Consultant (Document 575) is based on the DBIA Standard Form of Agreement between Design-Builder and Design Consultant (Document 540) and recognizes the fact that the design consultant may have a need to directly engage the services of practitioners from other design disciplines. Introduced in response to customer demand, the Sub-Consultant Agreement allows architects and engineers to engage the services of other designers, including landscape architects, lighting designers, etc., without having to adapt Document 540 to this purpose or look outside the DBIA family of forms.

Both the DBIA Standard Form of Teaming Agreement and the DBIA Standard Form of Agreement between Design Consultant and Design Sub-Consultant encourage DBIA best practices, such as collaboration and cooperation and reflect DBIA's original risk allocation approach that distributes risk to the participant best able to manage it in the most cost effective manner.

For more information, visit   www.DBIA.org.