Will any part of it be competitively bid? Will the full extent of the design be documented? Will there be a Guaranteed Maximum Price? Who will design and produce the construction documents? Will the builder provide any design services? What level of custom work? Are there time constraints? Have you built before?

Migthyanvil, we've already completed the bid process and the design (with another design and engineering co). All we want to do now is enter into an appropriate builder based on our assessment of the bids that we received.

This is 100% custom build. We really like to have the home completed within 8 months of contract execution.

Regards,

The contract you want is most accurately called "Cost of the Work with a Fixed Fee" but is often called "Cost Plus" in the simplified jargon beloved by home builders. The Fixed Fee can be set as a Lump Sum or a Percent of the Cost of the Work. There can also be a Guaranteed Maximum Price and also a Shared Savings. Using the more sophisticated project delivery methods usually requires either a more sophisticated builder or a design professional to oversee the job but I have know some builders who use the Shared Savings option very effectively.

The best contract forms are the ones written by professional builder or architect organizations because the terms and conditions have been tested in courts for many years and all the parts work together. These contract forms are copyrighted so you have to buy them and you're not even supposed to copy and reuse them. The forms from builder organizations (like AGC) are biased toward the builder and forms from architect organizations (like AIA) are biased toward the owner. It's not so much that the wording is biased but often certain conditions are addressed more or less fully, like what happens when you want to terminate the contract, since builders generally don't like this subject. Builders also don't usually like to give up any amount of control of the Work, specifically the determination of acceptable quality. The definition of what is a "Cost of the Work" is critical as well as time constraints. Most first invoices will contain something you did not expect to pay for and the schedule will inevitably have already slipped. How often the builder will revise the project budget and schedule is also important since most home builders aren't accustomed to providing a high level of project monitoring services to the Owner.

Any standardized contract form should be modified to suit your particular project. No contract form should be accepted as originally written. I can't tell you more because I don't know anything about the project and I have found the "one size fits all" approach doesn't work well even for simple homes.

We really like to have the home completed within 8 months of contract execution.

Highly unlikely if this is a large home with a full and fully finished basement.

(Copy and retain the previous post. Good free advice is hard to come by.)

I will agree that the AIA contract is a little more owner-friendly than the typical builder's contract but it too is designed primarily to protect someone other than the homeowner - in this case the architect. As far as I know, there are no form contracts out there written from the homeowner's perspective. And IMHO that means there are no form contracts that adequately protect the homeowner.

Whatever contract you use, you really need to READ it clause-by-clause and think about what each and every clause means and when the terms of that paragraph might come into play and how they will affect you under various scenarios.

If there are any clauses you do not understand completely, have an attorney go over it with you and explain what those clauses mean in detail. If you finish reading a contract and think you don't need an attorney to go over parts of it with you then you are either more brilliant than Einstein, a construction contract lawyer with 30 years of experience, or you're dumber than a brick and in total denial. LOL!

And don't just trust your own attorney to tell you "it's okay" without a complete explanation. There are lazy lawyers out there who will take a quick look and decide "its a form contract so its probably okay." It amazes me some of the things people (including lawyers) will sign once they are hear "it's a standard form contract."

In fact any standard form contract out there will have been written by teams of experienced lawyers who were hired by whatever organization promulgates that particular form contract. Those lawyers were ethically bound to look out for their CLIENT's best interest and you were not their client. So, if they could find a way to insert a clause which would protect their clients from possible damages - even when their own clients were at fault and fully deserved to pay damages - they will have done so. Not because the lawyers are bad people but failing to protect the clients' interests is legal malpractice. That is the way the system works.

Thus, you should think of any form contract as nothing more than a starting point to negotiate a fair contract that will protect you as well as the builder.
One way to think about whether a particular contract clause is fair is to ask yourself - and your builder - would the builder would agree to the clause if the terms BUILDER and OWNER were reversed. If the answer is "no" then the contract as written is not fair to the Owner.

It is difficult to generalize about AIA contracts because there are so many of them and they cover so many project delivery methods and project scopes. Of course, if no architect is involved in the construction phase of a house all references to an architect can be crossed out or the name of another party can be substituted.

If you think AIA contracts do not effectively protect an owner you have probably not read very many of them. I would say that the primary goals of an AIA contract is to give an architect the authority to act as an owner's agent, resolve disputes, provide design clarification, enforce the contract, assess the builder's quality control & assurance, review material submittals, monitor the general progress of the work, and, at all times, protect the owner's interests. Because these tasks put the architect in a vulnerable position there is wording in an AIA contract to prevent the architect from inadvertently becoming responsible for aspects of the project under the sole control of the Owner or the Builder. To those unfamiliar with this fine line of responsibility, the clauses sound weighted toward protecting the architect.