Recently, Conspectus participated in two conferences: Construction Owners Association of America (COAA) and Lean Construction Institute's Lean in Design Forum. Both groups are searching for a means to improve construction project delivery with some..

In my recent post, When Specifiers Engage in Magical Thinking, I described what happens when aspecifier believes that putting more instructions into a specification willmake for a better outcome.  Never mindwhether or not those instructions were..

One of the hallmarks of magical thinking is the notion that if you think a thing, you can make it happen, simply by thinking it.  This is often reinforced by our tendency to see connections between events and our propensity to interpret those..

What could possibly go wrong?

When starting a new design project, what is actually known? Very little. The relevant design decisions must be made as the project progresses. So how can projects be effectively documented before all decisions are made? UniFormat™!

Architects are obligated to protect the public as a primary duty, but not the only duty. We wrote about architects having a fiduciary duty to the owner and the owners' right to have trust and confidence in their specifiers. All these duties exist..

New and Different

The industry is changing. The emerging revolution is that licensed architects and engineers owe a fiduciary duty to owners. This change will have dramatic effect on communications and documentation between design teams (including..

In his blog post last week, David Stutzman presented several examples illustrating ways in which architects fail in their fiduciary duty to owners, typically through covert advocacy and through not obtaining the owner's informed consent for material..

First, owners must know who the specifiers are before this question can be answered. Trust and confidence is an underlying core principle of the fiduciary duty licensed learned professionals (architects and engineers) owe to owners. As a licensed..