- Different Types of Owner Architect Agreements

My name is Jon Hall. I'm a principal and project manager here at GGLO Design in Seattle, Washington. Today I'm gonna be talking with you about how we do project management at GGLO. The types of owner-architect agreements we often use, again, they range depending on the scope and scale of the projects. For a smaller project, we may use a letter of agreement, like this, which is a sort of a letter describing the scope of work, describing the schedule, and describing the fee. Usually for smaller projects, that's what we'll do.

Or for the first phases of a project that is just getting underway. As we move into the larger projects, we may use an AIA agreement, like this. This is a B109 for a multi-family project. This is, again, for larger projects, more complex, and with more risk and more liability for those types of projects. Sometimes we'll also partner with contractors for design-build agreements, the DBIA contracts, are something that we also use.

Generally, we'll start out with a draft of these contracts. Our team will develop them based on our past experience. Then we'll deliver them to the owner. They will often, then, make comments that they may have, they may review that with their legal team and come back with additional input. Then once we have a semi-final version, we will review that with our legal team, just to make sure that everything matches up with our insurance requirements, matches up with our liability, and all of our risk is appropriately covered.

Then we'll issue a final that is signed by the owner and signed by the architect, and we move on into documentation.

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