Originally from the American Journal of Construction Arbitration & ADR (AJCA)

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I.   INTRODUCTION

At the onset of any major construction project, it is invariably the desire of the contracting parties to have a well-run, well-planned, on-budget, on schedule, no-problem project without major claims and disputes.  Unfortunately, the nature of these beasts has proven many times that the opposite occurs.  This not only results in excessively prolonged disputes involving millions of dollars of contractor claims and damages to owners that the parties were unable to avoid during the course of the project, but also in the destruction of the owner/contractor relationship.  On top of the claim/damages costs come the large sums spent on attorneys, expert delay and damage consultants, the valuable time lost, and expense of key employees who are necessary to prosecute or defend the claims.  Contractors and owners have been struggling for untold years to figure out ways to solve these problems through the development of different contracting methodologies such as design-build, pre-construction/design assist, construction management at risk or not at risk, and integrated project management, to name a few.  The concept of “partnering” was also developed and implemented on many projects with some success.  However, the fact that the proverbial “rock in the road” appeared and surprised the project participants often found a way to dissolve those partnerships, reverting them back to the historical adversarial relationship of contractor versus owner.