Architect's liability in making decision during construction stage

Abstract

Construction industry consists of multidisciplinary teams such as employer, architect, engineer, quantity surveyor, contractor and etc. The architect is one of the professional who play the main role in the construction industry. This is because, the architect is the party who has the closest relationship with the employer and the contractor. As the professional in the construction industry, the architect will act on behalf of the employer especially as the employer’s agent. Besides that, the architect can also act as the contract administrator, independent contractor, adjudicator and quasi arbitrator in the construction industry. In this study, the architect can be as the quasi arbitrator in order to solve the problems that arise between the employer and contractor. As the middle person who will resolve the dispute between the contract parties, the architect shall be impartial and fair in giving the decision. The architect also must act in good faith for both contracting parties. However, there is an issue due on the impartiality of architect’s decision where the architect acts as the employer’s representative. So, the architect has the capability to be learning towards or bias to the contractor. Because of that, the objective of the study is to identify whether the architects can be held liable to the contracting parties for any decisions made in the context of his acting as a quasi arbitrator. Other than that, data collection of research methodology for the study is documentary analysis which it based on the legal cases. There are 6 cases selected for analysis to answer the objective of the study. The architect will be found liable if he is not acting in a quasi judicial immunity as the quasi arbitrator. He is also liable for the bad faith decision.