"These contracts represent the input of stakeholders from across the industry. No one party is favored," Mumma adds.

More New Offerings

Other new offerings include a new standard contract (ConsensusDocs 210) for public works owner projects that use state funding or federal financial assistance, especially those that are highly engineered construction projects such as water and wastewater facilities. The agreement is drafted to allow individual agencies to create their own project-specific supplements.

Introduced in August, a new land survey agreement (ConsensusDocs 244) addresses the unique characteristics of land surveying, including the need to acquire laboratory testing services.

Most recently, ConsensusDocs published a contract for projects using commissioning services (ConsensusDocs 820). The agreement provides language for owners to use when procuring commissioning services to verify building system performance. The new contract also establishes the rights and obligations of the professional who will serve as the commission authority.

As part of its five-year review process with stakeholders, a number of revisions are coming soon, including a revised integrated project delivery agreement to keep pace with industry changes.

"We were the first to publish a standard contract addressing integrated project delivery and building information modeling," Perlberg says. "We have separate working groups that will ensure we remain state-of-the-art in those areas and keep moving things forward by doing so."

In the coming months, ConsensusDocs also plans to release agreements tailored to the needs of construction managers and trade contractors.

"A lot of industry members still don't use standard documents. They use what are called 'Frankenstein documents,' where they piece together contracts from different experiences," Perlberg says. "This type of piecemeal contract takes away from the predictability of projects, which hurts the entire industry by creating inefficiencies and contention."