Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren shared the social position, educational background, tastes, and sensibilities of the people who commissioned their work. They could represent them in every sense of the word. Their buildings were built on a piecework basis by a construction industry in which the lore of various crafts was handed down through long periods of apprenticeship. As a result their clients experienced few surprises in the course of design and construction.

Today, on the other hand, owners, particularly those who are building for the first time, may feel cut off from the architect and contractor who share many interests. The technical complexity of modern construction requires an exchange of information between builders and designers. They have similar, if not identical, educational backgrounds, and a majority of both groups would probably count building as their primary interest in life.

It is sad to relate, but today's owners are also likely to be separated from architects and contractors in having higher disposable incomes. The construction industry is not lavish in its monetary rewards.
Finally, must of the owners' sense of isolation grows out of the American architect's unique legal and ethical responsibilities to the contractor, responsibilities which often appear to conflict with his duties as the owner's agent.

The first unexpected change order is usually enough to turn an owner's uneasiness into paranoia. The architect, who has been paid by the owner to design the building and to draw up the construction contract, reads that contract with impartiality, and concludes that because of newly discovered problems the owner owes the contractor additional money.

To the uninitiated this seems to be an act of betrayal.

The added money wont make the building more useful or more profitable. It will only pay for removing a slab of reinforced concrete that was not discovered when the borings were made. Or worse, it will buy a catch basin that the architect forgot to include in the drawings.

"It's not my fault;" says the owner. "Why should I be the one to pay?"

Of course, it isn't the contractor's fault either. In the case of the concrete slab, it isn't even the architect's fault.

If the catch basin had not been omitted from the bid documents its cost would have been added to the bid. It is, after all, the owner's building. But the sense of betrayal persists. "Why didn't my architect protect me? Why did he side with my adversary, the contractor?"

The search for an answer to these reasonable questions begins in the early nineteenth century when improved public sanitation resulted in unprecedented growth in the English population. This created a demand for new construction which could not be met by the old order of gentleman architects and craft guilds.

General contractors offering to construct buildings within a given time for a lump sum forced architects to produce highly defined construction contracts based on detailed plans and material specifications. Quantity surveyors, who calculated the amounts of materials required to execute these contracts as a basis for bidding and payment, were established as a profession separate from architecture. This separation of contract writing from contract administration greatly clarified professional relationships.
The American experience produced a messier division of responsibilities. As we spread westward, general contractors were in the vanguard. In many cities they pre-date the architectural profession, and in some cases they were its founders.

John Van Osdel, who became Chicago's first architect, was a contractor with a competitive advantage because he made drawings of his projects before attempting to build them. He was encouraged to establish an architectural practice by other contractors who saw the advantage of working from drawings.

The quantity survey system was never established in America. Our contractors were accustomed to doing their own cost estimates, and the establishment by the government of unit prices for construction was not practical under a federal system.

The only remaining function of the quantity surveyor, the impartial interpretation of the contract, was delegated to the architect. This saved the expense of establishing a new profession, but placed American architects in the position of representing all of the adversaries, including themselves, during construction disputes. It is the kind of responsibility that King Solomon would have had if he had been the father of the disputed child.

Contractors and architects have learned to live with this institutionalized conflict of interest, but it is not surprising that owners are confused by it.

When an architect's error causes the owner a real loss (if, for instance, the catch basin had been shown and built in the wrong place and had to be moved), the architect pays for the correction. Owners rarely object to this. But change orders which add to the value of their project as a fair cost seem to cause trouble.

To avoid arguing with an owner, architects are sometimes tempted to try to stick the contractor with the cost of a required change or to negotiate a trade by which the added expense can be made up by a hidden omission somewhere else in the project. Like most unethical behavior, this is ultimately self-defeating. An aggrieved contractor has too many ways of getting even, and an honest omission is much easier to live with than a deliberate misdeed.

If we wrote our contracts in such a way that the owner was protected from every contingency, the cost of this insurance would be added to all bids.

If we established an intermediary profession, we would be paying the cost of arbitration on even the happy jobs.

Most clients eventually come to the conclusion that the system is fair. A Few, I suspect, recognize that it is fair, but continue to complain as a bargaining technique. They pay for their bad manners in the bids on subsequent buildings.

Fortunately, even the most unreasonable and abusive clients are protected by the perverse pride of an industry which measures its worth by the quality of what it builds.

The best owners, blessed with congenital optimism and curiosity, approach the construction process on a basis of trust. They enter into the spirit of one of the most rewarding collective enterprises available to humans. As the job proceeds they may meet plumbers for whom sanitary waste systems are as elegant as trees and masons who save the stones which sparkle for the corners. The enthusiasm of these artisans leaves little room for greed. Happy people always get their money's worth.