In practice, you may find that clients or contractors assume that when errors, ambiguities or omissions in the architect’s documentation result in additional costs, that these are to be fixed at the architect’s cost, or that they are entitled to be compensated. The assumptions persist whether the additional costs arise out of an error by the architect or other factors beyond the architect’s control.
This note is about those errors, ambiguities or omissions which may realistically happen from time to time and need to be rectified. We’ll refer to these as ‘discrepancies’. This note is about managing client expectations around discrepancies, who bears the cost of their rectification and how related cost increases can be managed through a project budget contingency sum A sum of money included in a building contract or preserved outside it for expenditure, if necessary, on matters unforeseen at the time that the contract price was calculated. View full glossary . It is important to ensure that your client understands and allows for a contingency sum in their project budget to cover such discrepancies.