DAN BUELOW: Welcome to Talk to Me About A&E. I'm Dan Buelow, managing director for Willis A&E, the Center of Excellence for WTW that is exclusively dedicated to providing insurance and risk management solutions to design professionals in North America. Our topic today is on risk identification and evaluation.
This is the first of the four cornerstones of managing design professional risk. The Four Cornerstones of Managing Design Professional Risk is actually a program that was developed by Mr. Mark Blankenship, director of risk management for Willis A&E. Mark will be joining me for this discussion, and in fact, we will be covering all four of his cornerstones as part of this podcast series.
All design firms must evaluate every prospective project opportunity to determine whether or not it's a good fit for that firm. The firm will need to make a go/no-go decision as to whether or not to invest its precious time and resources. And in doing so, they will have to consider a set of very specific factors to help determine whether or not this project will be profitable for the firm.
When it comes to identifying and evaluating risk, the design firm must recognize the cost of a claim. Any design firm that has experienced a professional liability claim will tell you that these claims can be very costly to the firm. These costs can include the direct out-of-pocket deductible or self-insured retention expenses a firm will incur on virtually every claim that is made against them, as well as the higher insurance costs they will have to pay if their loss ratio is impacted.
These direct out-of-pocket expenses can be significant to the firm's bottom line. However, there are also intangible costs of a professional liability claim that can be even greater, including the distraction to the firm's business in dealing with the claim, going through discovery and depositions, and dealing with the claim and adjusters and lawyers. And there is the potential strain on client relationships, as well as the firm's reputation. Altogether, these costs can be significant and even devastating to a business.
And it's because of this there are good reasons for firms to have clear no-go practices in place to identify and evaluate risks and new business opportunities. And that is what we will be talking about today with my good friend and associate, Mr. Mark Blankenship. Hey, Mark, how are doing?
MARK BLANKENSHIP: All right. Good afternoon, Dan.
DAN BUELOW: Good to have you back, Mark. So as noted, Mark is director of risk management for our Willis A&E team and is responsible for helping our clients manage claims, negotiate difficult contracts, and help educate our clients.
Mark and I met over 20 years ago when we both worked for DPIC. I headed up the underwriting for the Midwest region back then, and Mark was a senior claim adjuster. Prior to joining us, Mark headed up the underwriting for Liberty Mutual's architects and engineers division.
So Mark has been on the claims underwriting and brokerage side of the house, all in support of architects' and engineers' professional liability, completing, as he would say, his nerd trifecta. So, Mark, as I mentioned in my opening comments here, we will be doing a four-part podcast series on your four cornerstones of managing design professional risk. Talk to me about these cornerstones.
MARK BLANKENSHIP: Well, over the last 25 years of specializing in architects' and engineers' professional liability, I've come to the conclusion that virtually everything we do in terms of risk management can be lumped into one of four buckets. And it starts with what we're going to talk about today-- client selection, risk identification.
Not every deal is a good deal. And the most profitable firms are able to sniff out the opportunities that are not going to pan out well for them. The second cornerstone is contract negotiation and integration of your subcontract agreements. There's a lot that's been published on this topic, and these days I try and focus on strategies for getting what we want because we know what we want.
The third cornerstone is QA/QC, including documentation. Documentation is an evergreen topic that we want to continue to emphasize. And then the fourth cornerstone is construction contract administration, including project closeout. And there you will notice I use the term CCA instead of CA-- Construction Administration-- because I think it's a more accurate description of the service that the design firm is providing. It's administering the contract of construction. It's not administering the construction itself. And so those are the four cornerstones, Dan.
DAN BUELOW: Well, that's great. And again, we're going to be going over all four of them. Eventually, here, we're going to have four different podcasts. Each one will have two parts to it. And we're going to start today with again risk identification and evaluation. And I think it's very important, as design firms consider these cornerstones, that they also recognize the very basics of risk management. And that is really that you can transfer your risk. You can transfer your risk by insurance, and you can transfer your risk by contract.
You can also avoid risk. However, you cannot transfer all of your risks by insurance, nor can you transfer all your risk by contract. And as a business, you cannot avoid all risk. You really need to be doing all of the above. And you need to, at the end of the day, assume and control your risk as a design professional.
My first insurance job-- Mark, you might appreciate this-- was out of college. Was with a reinsurance intermediary, and I went through a training program over a year span of time, which included a stint-- and my only stint, in fact-- in the claims department of this reinsurance intermediary. And in that department there and going through that, I learned three things in life in reviewing catastrophic claims as a young man.
And they are, number one, always buckle up. Number two, never jump headfirst in the shallow end of a pool. And number three, never defrost frozen pipes under your house with a blowtorch. And so I think these were all good lessons for me. And the big takeaway really here is assuming and controlling your risk. You might have the broadest insurance coverage available and a fully insurable contract. However, if you jump headfirst in the shallow end of a pool, there's a good chance none of this will really matter.
So, Mark, I'd like to talk to you about what design professional firms can do to assume and control their risk when it comes to four specific key no-go/go considerations. And those are-- client selection factors, project selection factors, and project team evaluation. And lastly, contracts. And again, these are rooted in your four cornerstones. But certainly, they're all related, aren't they? with this evaluation of risk. So beginning with client selection factors, Mark, talk to us about evaluating the risks of a prospective client.
MARK BLANKENSHIP: Well, different clients do bring different risk profiles. And we could start by talking about project type. Data has shown that the type of project that enjoys the most favorable ratio of billings to claims dollars going out the door is industrial projects. They tend to be highly challenging. However, the nature of the clients-- they are focused on making money, and they don't have time to be involved in litigation. And they are sophisticated. They understand the need for maintenance of their facilities.
The next most favorable category is commercial. This would be offices and retail stores. And again, we're dealing with a single owner who's a commercial entity who is typically somewhat sophisticated and understands the need to maintain their building.
The middle zone is probably schools. They have been trending badly over more than a decade. I think this is a reflection of the state of local school budgets. Their champagne tastes and beer budgets create conflicts and problems for design professionals.
Then it becomes unfavorable when we look at the residential sector. Single-family homes generate more claims than commercial projects, based in large part on the expectations. We're all familiar with the term "dream house," but who has ever really thought very long about their dream office? It's just not a thing.
And then when we get to multifamily residential, this is Dante's inner circle of hell for design professionals. Condo projects represent between 4% and 5% of the insured billings and about 20% of the claims dollars going out the door. So this means there's somewhere between 400% and 500% more risky than the average project. So that would be the first step in evaluating a project-- is what type of project is it?
When we look at the client, how well funded is the client? It would be the question. I think the best client in the United States today, historically, has been the US federal government. It doesn't make many claims against its design professionals. It's well-funded. The people making decisions, if they have to pay change orders, it's not coming out of their personal pocket.
Contrast this with a developer client who every dime that he could squeeze out of the project and claims results in another dollar of profit. And boards also tend to be difficult clients, boards of directors-- either school boards or condo boards. Think about how hard it is to make that one special person in your life happy consistently. Now you have 4 or 40 or maybe 400 clients that you're trying to make happy, and the expectations become more difficult to fulfill.
DAN BUELOW: That's a great point, Mark. I'm just going to add to that is that how important is we've talked in the past. Most of these claims against design professionals, again, are rooted in expectations. And as you've described there, the importance of understanding these different types of clients and the challenges that a design professional has when it comes to managing expectations. And there's going to be different expectations and different challenges, set of challenges, when it comes to working with, as you mentioned, developer versus a school board versus a residential individual homeowner, right?
MARK BLANKENSHIP: Yeah, high-value homeowners also tend to be difficult clients. They typically have lawyers on speed dial and the resources to pursue claims. So they tend to be difficult clients.
DAN BUELOW: And I would add another to your list there, which I think is a great list, is litigation history. I mean, design professionals usually go through a very thorough process of being evaluated through the interview process. And it's important to also turn the tables, if you will, and find out what experience that client has. What has their experience been? What do they have as far as litigation history to clarify what their goals and expectations are? Do you have full access to those decision-makers, and so on?
And on the experience and project type, it reminds me of a pretty significant claim that we had where we had an architect client that had this great opportunity that came to do a significant hotel project. The problem was that our client, the architect, had never done a hotel project nor had their client ever done a hotel project.
So you can guess how that all ended. But they went forward, both these parties, and it didn't end well. And I think, again, what is that prospective client's experience in that project type, how sophisticated they are, I think, are very good factors to consider.
MARK BLANKENSHIP: Well, you as a design firm, your experience with that project type is a crucial factor. And I offer two examples to illustrate this point. One is hospitals. For me as an underwriter, I found architects doing hospitals to be really a very favorable class.
And even though hospitals are technically difficult projects where there is usually an interplay between a local building code and a department of health code, just ramps up the level of difficulty. But hospitals choose specialist architects. They want people who know the ropes, and this results in a better financial result, fewer change orders, fewer problems.
And I would compare that to apartments these days. A lot of architects have recognized the market opportunity in housing and have jumped in and are dabbling in the apartment marketplace. And the results have been bad, quite frankly.
Apartments used to be considered average risk. They were owned by a single commercial owner who typically understood maintenance needs. But with this influx of inexperienced design professionals, combined with paper GCSEs who are not exerting adequate control over their forces, it's resulted in a deterioration of the claims experience for apartments in recent history.
DAN BUELOW: All right. Excellent points. And which brings me to the second of the four go/no-go considerations. And that is specific to project selection factors. And you've touched on this already a bit, but let's get some more thoughts from you on this.
And I, as I think of project selection factors, I would also include certainly understanding what the scope of that project is and the budget, and so on, as well as the funding sources and as well as the delivery method. There's all sorts of considerations in that. Talk to us more about that, Mark.
MARK BLANKENSHIP: Then I'd like to respond with a story, if I might. And this is the story of The Little Engineering Firm That Could. And there were five principles, all strong and confident in their engineering ability. But one partner, in particular, was oblivious to business risk. And he took on two projects that resulted in multi-million dollar claims.
The first was in designing the attachment points for a swing stage that was being used in a renovation of a high-rise building. The work plan called for the swing stage to be lowered to the ground if winds were predicted to kick up over 35 miles an hour. Unfortunately, that happened on a weekend, and nobody was around to secure the swing stage. It came crashing to the ground, killing people on the ground.
And the second case, this engineer's largest client, a contractor, came on a Friday afternoon and said, hey, I need you to do me a favor. And who's going to say no to their largest client when they need a favor? And what he wanted was for the engineer to stamp some designs for a bleacher that was prepared by a firm out of Florida. It was not licensed in the state of Illinois.
And so he did that and then set about to do the review of those plans. And when he did, he found out that the Florida engineers had failed to account for snow loads. Go figure. They had miscalculated the wind loads, and they had stacked pin connections and pin connections because the foundation design had been sublet to yet another firm as part of a value engineering effort.
Well, and the result of that was, again, a multi-million dollar claim based on all of the changes that needed to be made, to the construction already ongoing. And once the engineers sealed those plans, he basically bought them. He assumed all the problems associated with that. So this demonstrates the need to evaluate the risks associated with your project type and your project delivery method.
When it comes to project delivery method, I would say standard average difficulty, new out-of-the-ground construction. For vertical construction, I expect to see 3% to 5% change orders. And it's important that your client understands contingencies and has a budget set aside for those anticipated change orders.
If your project's of renovation, I would expect more because there's hidden conditions. And so then I would expect 10% to 15% change orders just in the normal course of business. And what if your project is a fast track?
As both a claim supervisor and as an underwriter, my largest claims arose out of fast-track projects. And two of the biggest ones, both involve mechanical equipment that would not fit in the room it was designed to fit in because the room was designed and built before the equipment was selected. So you want to have an appropriate contingency that reflects the project delivery method.
DAN BUELOW: Excellent points. Great overview on this. And I think it's also important that design professional firms have clear go/no-go procedures in place and break it out by project type because there's going to be a different set of considerations when you think about different project types.
If you're working again on a condo project, you're going to want to address the maintenance issues, the condo writer, certainly the client selection, working with the developer, and so forth. And as you mentioned about fast track.
But in the case of design-build, we had a client that had a very bad loss in a design-build claim and came out with a-- after that, after barely surviving that particular claim-- they came out with their own specific go/no-go considerations. And they actually reviewed these with us for a program at one of our Willis A&E annual large firm convocations, and I call it Chuck's dB go/no-go list here.
And it begins with, is client willing to negotiate terms and conditions? That's one of their go/no-go. So if it's a take it or leave it proposition, they're not going to go forward with it. And are those terms and conditions insurable? That's certainly one of the checklist considerations. And then they get into proper flow down of terms from the prime agreement.
And we'll talk more about that with Mark on contracts, as well as-- is the contractor responsible for bid quantities and pricing? Probably a big one in all of this when it comes to design build. And then does the designer have responsibility for unforeseen items? And then lastly, limitation of liability and consequential damages and fair indemnification. So again, whatever your project is and your type of project, I think it is important to have these go/no-go considerations.
And at the end of this, Mark, I want to talk to you about that Little Engineer That Could story because I know the history of that and how you worked with that firm to come up with a very specific risk evaluation process that, frankly, allowed them to continue to get insurance. And we'll get into some of the details on that. But I think it stemmed from really very detailed and thoughtful go/no-go evaluation process.
And I think we've seen a lot of our firms have these procedures in place. Some of them seem so complex. They're probably impossible to follow. Others seem to be more of a seat-of-your-pants sort of an approach. So I do want to end this conversation here later on this topic here with you, Mark, to have you share your story on this.
But as we get into this next question then, or rather the next area here, so we've discussed the go/no-go considerations for both the client selection and project selection. Mark, talk to us about the team evaluation. What are the specific criteria considerations for evaluating the project team? And I think it's important to consider and keep in mind rather that when it comes to the project team evaluation, the firm needs to consider both the internal team as well as the external team, doesn't it?
MARK BLANKENSHIP: Well, yes, it does. And so we're looking at two main factors here. What is the availability of staff to execute the project in a timely manner without requiring overtime? And what is the firm's experience with this project type.
So those are the two major considerations. You also want to look to see what kind of subcontractors or sub-consultants are you going to be required to carry. And do you have appropriate subs for this project type with appropriate experience? Those are the main factors associated with staff. But the availability of staff is really an important consideration that should be given significant weight in the evaluation process.
DAN BUELOW: Right. That certainly is. And as far as when you're looking at external-- who are your partners and who are you going to be working with and the quality of those subs-- having meaningful, good sub-consultant agreements in place, having adequate professional liability insurance in place with those subs, depending on the extent and scope of the services that those subs are going to be providing, all will be very important, won't it?
MARK BLANKENSHIP: Well, that's true. Dan, who is on your team is important also. Who does the owner want you to carry as a sub? I think I have what I hope is an inspirational message here today, which is that even risky projects can be executed successfully if you insist on a high level of service and are able to execute according to your plan.
And I'm thinking, in particular, here of a firm that I interviewed as an underwriter. They were doing $30 million worth of apartments year after year with no claims. And as I just indicated, apartments have been trending badly lately for most firms. So theirs was a truly exceptional result.
And I asked for an interview with the principals to find out more about how they were achieving this exceptional result. And part of their secret sauce was in controlling who their sub-consultants were. And basically, they would not take on geotechnical consultants or civils or surveyors. And so that was part of their recipe for success-- is they did not assume vicarious liability for risks associated with the site, which is what those disciplines do.
DAN BUELOW: Excellent points. And then on the sub-consultant agreement, having a consistency of documents is important. We've seen where there's been real issues, where the sub is not going to have the arbitration clause, and the prime is stuck with that. Or they get a limitation liability clause. And I know that you've worked on a lot of claims, and you've seen that these sub-consultant agreements can be very important.
MARK BLANKENSHIP: Surely, they are. And the limitation of liability is something that geotechnical consultants are very successful in insisting on. And one of the reasons we don't want to hire a geotech is because they're going to have a limitation of liability in their agreement.
And most design professionals, in fact, do not have limitation in their prime agreement. So if you limit a sub-consultant's liability, by contract, you are assuming that liability excess of the limitation amount, and that could be viewed as a contractual assumption of liability by a professional liability carrier and ultimately result in a coverage issue.
DAN BUELOW: Yeah, great point. We've talked about the geotech in the past. And we have geotech clients ourselves, and I always advise it would be best for them to contract directly with the client. And so they're not subject to onerous flow-down provisions of the prime. They can have their own agreement directly.
But certainly, even if you can do away with that limitation liability, I think it's still certainly is our advice that the design professional not hire the geotech. Let the owner hire that geotech directly because the vicarious exposures that you would be assuming as a firm.
And then there's situations that, let's say, it's a go/no-go, take-it-or-leave-it proposition, and you're stuck with the geotech, so to speak. And the owner wants to have you work with their geotech. We've run into that, haven't we, Mark? And what is your advice in that situation?
MARK BLANKENSHIP: Well, we certainly have run into that. And this requires for some creative solutions. I would want to have, in the prime agreement, that you get the benefit of any limitation of liability that's going to be built into a subconsultant whose use is insisted upon by the owner. So it's a reverse flow-down. I would call it a flow-up requirement. Yeah, otherwise, you still have that problem.
DAN BUELOW: All right. So Mark, this last of the four go/no-go considerations, I'd like to discuss with you is in regards to contracts. And so the second of your four cornerstones is on contracts. And so we'll be doing a pretty deep dive on that. But talk to us about the importance of contract terms and risk management.
MARK BLANKENSHIP: Well, the contracts do lay out the liability allocation. And that, of course, is going to be very important in any claim scenario. So I would view an AIA-style agreement as a good starting place because it has the mutual waiver of consequential damages. It has an acceptable definition of the standard of care. And those are two very impactful statements.
There is no indemnification in the AIA agreements. I don't think any is needed because what professional liability insurance covers is the legal liability of a design professional. And a client could always make a claim based on legal liability, no matter what's in the contract, or even if there is no contract.
But if we can add in a limitation of liability, then that makes the contract-- that's the best that we could do. That, in a mutual waiver of consequential damages, an acceptable standard of care-- that's the gold standard of contracting. If it's an owner-drafted contract, it's probably not going to be as favorable. That's going to get some negative points in my evaluation because the owner has gone to the trouble of hiring a lawyer to write their own agreement.
What was the point of that exercise? The point of that exercise is to transfer risk to the design professional or away from the owner in any event. So that's naturally going to be more difficult in terms of risk evaluation and allocation for the design firm.
So we want to look at the contract type and the fee and profit. That should be a major consideration for us. How profitable is this deal going to be? And the more profitable, obviously, the more favorable I am inclined to look at the project. So those I think are the major considerations.
And what I want to do with the contract, ultimately, is bring it within insurance. You should be able to transfer virtually all of your professional liability risk up to the policy limits to your insurance policy. And what we try and knock out is liability assumed under contract or liability imposed by the owner. That's above and beyond what is required by law. And the main reason is that that's what's not covered by insurance. And that then begins to look like unreasonable risk assumption.
DAN BUELOW: And that's a great point. I think that's one of our biggest areas of concern-- is these owner-drafted agreements or these modified association agreements are often chock-full of uninsurable language. And the advantage of an AIA document or EJCDC contract is that they're both insurable. And I would argue that that is to the advantage of the owner.
Keeping in mind that this professional liability insurance, which is the coverage we're really talking about here, that the owner's going to be most concerned about, that is third-party insurance, meaning it is not for the design professional. It's for the client, the owner. And so it certainly is in their best interest to have that insurance intact and not to have it somehow clouded in any way or compromised in any way by some bad lawyered-up language.
And unfortunately, we see some of these contracts that are drafted by attorneys that I don't think understand what they're doing. They come from a contractor's background, and/or, worst-case scenario, they know exactly what they're trying to do, I guess. But the point is, is that these contracts are very important. And there is a direct correlation between the coverage that's in these policies and the professional liability coverage form and the standard of care as a design professional, as you've outlined there, Mark.
I also think it's important when we come back to this consideration go/no-go is that there's a set of considerations. And you're dealing sometimes with a public agreement contract versus a private agreement.
However, some design firms could make an argument that the project itself is a go because they checked the box and everything else-- their team capabilities, their client relationship, their experience with this client, and this particular project type. I understand that. Whereas I wouldn't be signing that same contract for a developer client that I've never worked with. So I think that, as we consider these contracts, Mark, and I know you're often helping our clients talk through some of these deal-breakers, deal-makers discussion, right?
MARK BLANKENSHIP: Well, that's true. And just today I was involved in a discussion with the ACEC where we were trying to think of public contracts that are favorable, or at least fair.
Unfortunately, we couldn't find many favorable public contracts. And so I would say that, generally, public entities are good clients with bad contracts.
DAN BUELOW: So Mark, let's talk about that client that you helped with a while back. And this was a client of ours that had some real claim issues, which you described early on here. And you helped them develop a process for project and risk evaluation. And that it was really necessary for them to implement something in order to renew their insurance. And so talk to us about that and what a risk register is and how it can be used to manage risk.
MARK BLANKENSHIP: Sure. Well, so what happened with this firm was they had now 2 multimillion-dollar claims in their loss history. And they were on the verge of being uninsurable. We marketed the account and got a lot of declinations. And it became clear that some extra effort was going to be required.
And the path to success that we identified was client selection. There never was any engineering error in these claims. That was the frustrating part. But they were inherently high-risk type projects. And so we had to convince at least one underwriter that the firm was not going to take on high-risk projects anymore.
And so I sat down with the principals, and we designed the project evaluator. And this evaluator then looked at the contract type and the fee and profit and the client profile and the staff training and availability, the firm's experience-- considered all of these factors and gave them weightings.
And then we looked at adding negative points for legal risk and liability, such as associated with high-risk type projects like condos. And we developed a scoring system, 100 points, and the project needed to score at least 60 points, or it wouldn't be accepted without a majority vote of the partners.
Now, I want to point out a couple of key things here. First is this evaluator never leads to a, no, you can't do it. Resolve. If the project is high-risk, it leads to a recommendation that the project only be accepted upon a majority vote of the partners. So it's not just say no type of proposition.
And not to my surprise, but once the firm adopted this process, they stopped having claims. And now they've been golden for 20 years. And so they went from paying a substantial portion of their annual revenue-- I think it was 3%-- to enjoying the lowest possible insurance rates for structural engineers. And they did it because their loss experience improved, and their loss experience improved because their client selection procedure improved.
DAN BUELOW: And that was a real win for everybody. And it turned out to actually be a success, didn't it?
MARK BLANKENSHIP: A smashing success, yes, I would say. Going from on the verge of going out of business to enjoying the lowest possible insurance rates, that's a happy story.
DAN BUELOW: It'd be a success in our world. Yeah, absolutely. So, Mark, any parting words of wisdom on this topic of risk identification and selection of risk, go/no-go? And also talk to me about the role of effective communication and documentation in all of this.
MARK BLANKENSHIP: Sure. Well, I like to think of the four cornerstones of risk management as the four posts of a four-poster bed. When all four posts are solid, you get a really good night's sleep. But when one or more of those posts is not so solid, you need to lean more heavily on the solid posts.
And so typically, where we see firms compromising is in contracts and, to a significant extent, client selection. Nobody likes to say no to a project. And so if you are weak on contracts and maybe you're working with a client that you're not confident with, then you really probably need to shore up your QA/QC and your CA services-- control what you can control.
With regard to documentation, this is a significant part of the third cornerstone at QA,QC. I want to just point out to people that most contracts have an integration clause that says the final contract is the complete agreement between the parties, and any prior negotiations or memorandums of understanding are really not even relevant. So the documentation process, it could start prior to the contract, but be aware of the integration clause in your agreement that may render previous understandings null and void.
DAN BUELOW: Well, thanks, Mark. This has really been a great discussion on the first of the four cornerstones of managing A&E risk. Be sure to join us for our next Talk to Me About A&E, where I will be having Mark Blankenship back to talk about the second of his four cornerstones of risk management, which will be on allocating risk by contract. Thanks again, Mark.
MARK BLANKENSHIP: My pleasure, Dan.
DAN BUELOW: And thank you all for joining us for another Talk to Me About A&E podcast. For a full listing of all of our Willis A&E podcast, as well as to register for any of our upcoming Willis A&E monthly webinars and a full listing of our Willis A&E on-demand education programs, visit the Education Center of our website at www.wtwae.com. I'm Dan Buelow, and I will talk to you soon.
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Disclaimer
WTW hopes you found the general information provided here informative and helpful. The information contained herein is not intended to constitute legal or other professional advice and should not be relied upon in lieu of consultation with your own legal advisors. In the event you would like more information regarding your insurance coverage, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. In North America, WTW offers insurance products through licensed entities, including Willis Towers Watson Northeast, Inc. (in the United States) and Willis Canada Inc. (in Canada).
