Payment and cancellation

Nothing is charged before there is a signed contract

A bid or a written proposal precedes any work. Where the work is publicly procured, the bid documents and the contract govern; where it is negotiated, our proposal does. Either way, what you approve and what you are invoiced are the same document, and the unit prices in it are the unit prices on the pay application.

The unit price page publishes the structure a bid is built from, including what is excluded from every figure and what cannot be priced without a site visit. It exists so that nothing in a bid is a surprise, and it is deliberately more specific than anything you are obliged to be given.

How work is billed

Monthly pay applications. Work is billed monthly against measured quantities of the contract pay items — so many linear feet of pipe, so many manholes, so many cubic yards of concrete — certified and submitted in whatever form the contract requires. On public work that is usually an AIA-style application or the owner's own form, with a schedule of values agreed at the start.

Measured quantities, not estimated ones. A unit-price contract is billed on what was actually installed, measured in the field and agreed with the engineer or the owner's representative. That means a quantity can come in under the bid quantity as well as over, and both directions are honoured.

Mobilisation is a pay item and is billed on mobilisation, because it is spent whether or not a foot of pipe goes in the ground. Where the contract caps it as a percentage of the contract value, that cap governs.

Stored materials. Where the contract allows it, materials delivered and properly stored are billed before installation, with the documentation the contract requires. Where it does not, they are not.

Retainage is withheld at the percentage the contract specifies and released as the contract specifies, normally at substantial completion with a portion held to final acceptance. Colorado public-works retainage and prompt-payment rules apply to public projects and govern over anything on this page.

Lien waivers and certified payroll accompany pay applications where the contract requires them. On prevailing-wage work, certified payroll is submitted with each application, and a pay application arriving without it is an incomplete application.

The closeout package is the last milestone, not the last truck off site

A project is not complete when the crew leaves. It is complete when the testing is done and accepted, the as-built record drawings are submitted, the O&M manuals are delivered in the required format, and the operators have been trained on what they now have to run.

Final payment and retainage release are tied to that, and they should be. We would rather be measured on the closeout package than on the day the equipment went home.

Weather days

Colorado weather stops work, and the honest treatment of it is written into the contract rather than argued about afterwards.

Our crews stand down for lightning within range, for conditions that make an excavation or a trench unsafe, for concrete placement outside the temperature range the specification allows, and for anything that would compromise a test result. That is not discretionary and no schedule pressure changes it.

Contractually, weather is normally handled as an excusable non-compensable delay: the schedule is extended, the contract sum is not. Most public contracts include a number of anticipated adverse weather days per month, and days beyond that count are the ones that generate a time extension. We track them daily, in the daily report, so the record exists before it is needed.

Where a weather event goes beyond a stand-down and causes actual damage to work in place or to temporary works — a flooded excavation, a washed-out backfill — that is a different question and is dealt with under the contract's risk-of-loss and insurance provisions.

Standby caused by the site or the owner

Where a crew cannot work because access was not provided, a shutdown was not approved, an easement was not in place, an inspector did not arrive, a required utility locate was not done, or the owner suspended the work, standby is a compensable delay: crew, equipment and overhead for the period, at the rates in the contract.

That is a harder line than the weather rule, deliberately. Weather is nobody’s fault. A crew and an excavator standing at a locked plant gate at seven in the morning because a shutdown approval did not come through is a coordination failure, and pricing it at zero just means it keeps happening.

Where a bypass is running, standby is more expensive than it looks. Item 08.10 on the unit price sheet is a day rate because the bypass is attended, and every day the plant sits exposed on temporary works because of an approval is a day of real cost and real risk.

Changes and differing site conditions

A change to the scope is priced and agreed in writing before it is carried out, at the contract unit prices where the item exists and by agreement where it does not. A verbal “while you are in there” is how disputes start, and we will do the work — after a written change order.

Differing site conditions are the commonest source of change on this work and they deserve their own paragraph. On a plant built in stages over decades, record drawings are frequently wrong: an abandoned line shown as live, a live line not shown at all, an invert off by a foot, rock where the geotechnical report showed soil. Where we encounter a condition that materially differs from the contract documents, work on that element stops, the owner and the engineer are notified in writing the same day, and nothing is worked around until there is a decision. The notice requirement in your contract has a deadline in it, and we meet it.

Suspension, termination and cancellation

Before a notice to proceed. A bid that is not awarded costs you nothing. Where a contract has been signed but no notice to proceed has been issued and the owner cancels, we invoice nothing beyond any work actually authorised in the interim.

Suspension for convenience. Where the owner suspends the work, the direct cost of demobilising, protecting work in place, maintaining temporary works and remobilising is compensable, and the schedule is extended. If a bypass has to keep running through the suspension, it keeps running and it keeps being billed, because the plant does not care why the work stopped.

Termination for convenience. Work performed to date at contract unit prices, materials fabricated or delivered for the project, demobilisation, and the close-out of any temporary works. The contract's termination clause governs the detail.

Termination for default. Governed by the contract and by the surety arrangements on the project. We have no interest in writing our own version of it here.

Stop-work: when we stop and do not bill you for the pleasure

We will stop work where a condition makes it unsafe, where an excavation or a confined space cannot be entered safely, where continuing would breach the facility's discharge permit, or where proceeding would bury something that has not been tested and recorded.

You are told immediately, in writing, with what we found and what the options are. A stop-work on safety grounds is not a change order opportunity and we do not treat it as one.

If something is wrong with the work

Tell us. Workmanship defects in work we performed are corrected at our cost, and that position is not contingent on a form or a window — it is what a warranty on construction work means, and the specific terms and the warranty period are in your contract.

A structure that fails its hydrostatic test because of our placement is repaired and retested at our cost. A pipeline that fails a pressure or mandrel test because of our installation is the same. That is worth confirming with any contractor before award, because it is not universal and the wording matters.

Where a submittal or a closeout document is rejected for format rather than substance, we resubmit it corrected at no charge. Getting a format wrong is our problem to fix, which is why the format is agreed at the start.

How to raise any of this

Telephone (303) 482-3059, Mon–Fri 7:00 AM–4:30 PM MT, with the project number or the contract number if you have it. If not, the facility name and roughly when the work happened is enough to find it. Or email [email protected].

Where a contract, a subcontract or a public bid document exists, it governs over everything on this page. These notes describe our default position so that it is visible before you award work, not instead of the contract.