U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Subscribe to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers via RSS

Construction contracts often give one party discretion over certain aspects of the administration of a project. For example, a contract may give the owner the “sole discretion” to approve the use of contingency on a job or whether to give a contractor a time extension for an excusable delay.

Even where an owner has discretion to make specific determinations under the contract, there is generally at least one legal principle that limits how the discretion may be exercised—the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing.

I have written about how a contractor may breach the implied duty / covenant of good faith and fair dealing (click here for that post). This post shows how an example of how a public owner breached the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing by, among other things, improperly assessing liquidated damages.Continue Reading The Implied Duty of Good Faith and Fair Dealing

Frequently, the parties involved with building a construction project believe that one of the other parties is acting unreasonably. There are times where one of those parties — the owner, the prime contractor, a subcontractor, or a design professional — act so unreasonably that they may violate the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

Under Florida law, every contract contains an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The purpose of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing is to protect the reasonable expectations of the contracting parties in light of their express agreement.

While not a Florida case, a recent federal court case that went to trial in Idaho shows an example of a prime contractor acting unreasonably with its subcontractors on a federal government project.Continue Reading How the Implied Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing Can Apply in Construction Disputes

Change-in-scope claims are one of the most common contractor claims. Typically, scope disputes center on whether work that the owner directed a contractor to perform was part of the original scope of the contractor’s work. If it was part of the original scope, then the contractor may not be entitled to additional compensation or time to perform that work. But if it was out-of-scope work, it may be a breach of contract for the owner to refuse to pay for that work.

At times, scope disputes can result in the termination of the parties’ contract. That’s what happened in a recent dispute between the federal government and a contractor in GSC Construction, Inc. v. Secretary of Army.Continue Reading Federal Court Rejects Scope-Change and Time-Extension Claims

This is the third post in a five-part series about the most common reasons for winning GAO bid protests. The third most common reason for winning a bid protest is when an agency fails to follow the evaluation criteria stated in a solicitation for proposals.

As an example, in McGoldrick Construction Services Corporation, B- 409252.2 (Comp.Gen Mar. 28, 2014), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a solicitation for construction and maintenance services. The proposal was structured as a two-phase evaluation. In the first phase, the bidders would be whittled down to a few qualified bidders that would compete for the award in the second phase.Continue Reading Construction Bid Protests – Failure to Follow Evaluation Criteria