"2006 Vision Awards"

Constructech Magazine; Construction Coordinators
www.coordinators.com

October 1, 2006

For some contractors, good technology can help get down into the details. Commercial general contractor Construction Coordinators (CCI), www.coodinators.com, Needham, Mass., can certainly attest to this fact.

Aside from helping to facilitate better project communication, develop contracts, and track financials, its technology applications have helped this contractor defend a lawsuit with an unsatisfied subcontractor.

Disputing a workers compensation claim, an employee of a subcontracting company sued CCI and the building owner on a project, citing unsafe working conditions. While CCI demanded defense under the subcontract indemnity provisions, a claims adjuster determined the words “to the extent” meant the sub was responsible for defense if the injury was the fault of the sub. After a long process, the suit was eventually dismissed.

Further analysis of the process by CCI discovered that “to the extent” had been removed from CCI’s standard subcontract during a legal review several years earlier. Yet the project manager that hired the sub had modified an older agreement between the two parties, which left the erroneous loophole in the contract.

The company had been logging commitments into its Timberline Office package from Sage Timberline, www.sagetimberlineoffice.com, Beaverton, Ore., and subsequently creating subcontracts in Word documents. It would then update the subcontract log in Excel and the project director in another Word document. As a result, many contractors were using custom printed forms for subcontracts and printing from the forms, essentially eliminating multiple steps.

CCI set out to customize the entire process, ensuring no loophole would go unnoticed. The entire process is now streamlined. Once commitments are logged, all forms, documents, and spreadsheets become custom reports in Timberline.

This eases the process of tracking executed subcontracts with reminders sent automatically using project management. Technology from Adobe Systems, www.adobe.com, San Jose, Calif., and Microsoft, www.microsoft.com, Redmond, Wash., were also critical in this project.

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