Construction administration, usually shortened to CA, is the last phase of a typical design contract. It starts when the owner signs a construction contract and runs until the project is complete and closed out. During CA the design team answers the contractor's questions, reviews what the contractor plans to build, visits the site, and helps the owner decide whether the work and the payment requests are in order.
It's also a phase where the fee often runs short, for the reasons below.
What happens during construction administration
The exact scope comes from the owner's agreement with the engineer or architect, but most CA phases include the same kinds of work:
- Requests for information (RFIs). The contractor asks a question about the drawings or specifications, and the design team answers it in writing.
- Submittal reviews. The design team reviews shop drawings, product data, and samples against the design. We covered these in What is a submittal?
- Site visits. Someone from the firm visits the site at set intervals, observes the progress and quality of the work, and writes a field report.
- Payment applications. On many projects, the engineer or architect reviews the contractor's monthly payment application and certifies the amount it believes is due.
- Changes. The design team prepares supplemental instructions and helps price and document change orders between the owner and the contractor.
- Closeout. The team walks the project to build a punch list of items to finish or correct, then reviews closeout documents like warranties and record drawings.
Why the CA fee runs out
The schedule is set by someone else. The design team's fee assumes a construction schedule. If construction runs four months long, the RFIs, site visits, and pay applications keep coming, and the fee was sized for the original schedule.
The work arrives in small pieces. An hour on an RFI, half a day on a site visit, an afternoon on submittals. None of it feels large, so nobody checks the phase budget until it's gone.
Extra work looks like normal CA work. Answering questions about an owner's late design change takes the same kind of time as answering any other RFI. If no one flags it, it gets absorbed into CA instead of billed as an additional service.
It comes after the big phases. CA is often a small share of the total fee. In a $120,000 contract, it might be $12,000, spread over a year or more of construction.
How firms bill CA
Firms usually bill CA in one of three ways:
- Percent complete, often tied to construction progress, so the fee is billed as the building goes up.
- Hourly, sometimes with a not-to-exceed amount, so the fee follows the actual effort.
- A fixed monthly amount for the expected length of construction, with terms for what happens if it runs long.
Each one shifts the risk differently. Percent complete and fixed monthly billing leave the firm exposed when construction is slow or contentious. Hourly billing protects the firm but needs good time records and a client who agreed to it up front.
Keeping CA under control
Track hours against the CA phase every week. Comparing hours spent with the fee remaining shows trouble early, while there's still time to talk to the client.
Log every RFI and submittal on the project. A record of what came in, when, and how long it took is what supports a request for more fee later.
Write change orders for extra work before doing it. Requests that come from owner changes or a longer schedule belong in a change order. We wrote about that routine in How to get a change order approved before the extra work starts.
Put the schedule assumption in the contract. If the CA fee assumes a construction duration, saying so in the proposal gives you a clear point to raise additional services when the schedule moves.
How Kineo handles it
In Kineo, construction administration is a phase on the project's contract, with its own fee lines. Each fee line bills by declared percent complete or by approved hours and expenses at their rates, with the line amount as its budget. The project budget shows what's budgeted, billed, ready, and blocked for every line, and work that would push the CA phase over budget is held back and flagged before it reaches an invoice.
When the scope grows, a change order adjusts the fee lines or phase budgets from an effective date, and you can preview the new budget before approving it. Submittals and other documents live in the project with their own reviews and history, and each project has its own email address, so the contractor's messages stay with the job and the assistant suggests tasks from them.