Contract Selection on Construction Projects in Colorado (USA)

Abstract

Risk is abundant in construction contracting for all stakeholders, however, most especially project owners. To treat these risks, owners must use contracts to transfer risk to other parties and leverage their risk exposure with their budget to ensure a successful project. Project owners in the United States, specifically Colorado, engage in using several standard form contracts to approach different projects.

This study will be broken into 8 chapters. The main chapters will consist of the introduction, literature review, research methodologies, research findings, and conclusions. The literature review will detail how construction contracts operate, or the “heart” of a construction contract, will provide an understand for 8 widely used contracts that are available in Colorado, and gain an understanding of the inherent risks in construction. The subsequent two chapters will outline the design of the research questionnaire and an analysis of the data from the questionnaire results. Finally, there is a synthesis of the literature findings and questionnaire results.

Finally, all 8 contract formats selected for this study were ranked from highest owner risk to lowest. This ranking was completed through a detailed review of the literature available on the risk exposures in each contract type combined with the input given by professionals in the industry, via the findings of the questionnaire.