The Architect’s Role in Collaborative Design | Exploring Informal Involvement, Design Assist, and Delegated Design

This course is pending 1 AIA LU HSW

1. Define the three collaboration methods along this continuum, Informal Involvement, Design Assist, and Delegated Design, and the impact each of these methods have on safe design.
2. Differentiate the roles and responsibilities of the architect of record and engineer of record and who holds what design responsibility in a project.
3. Review the 1981 Kansas City Hyatt Regency Walkways Collapse as a case study. Exemplifying the role that delegated design had on it’s ultimate failure – getting to the heart of who is personally supervising and responsible for charge of a design project.
4. Review the Standard form contracts used in design collaboration strategies to clearly identify design responsibility.
5. Review the recent joint white paper published by AIA and AISC “Design Collaboration on Construction Projects” which outlines best practices for safe, collaborative design.

Meet the Speakers

Anthony Potter is a Principal attorney in the Offit Kurman Construction Law Practice Group and is a resident of the firm’s Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Office. Mr. Potter focuses his practice on counseling architects, engineers, and design-build entities involved in design and construction contracting, commercial and construction litigation, administrative law,  professional licensing and professional ethics matters.

Mr. Potter serves as general counsel to AIA Pennsylvania, special counsel to the American Council of Engineering Companies of Pennsylvania and is a member of the Penn State Harrisburg Advisory Board for the Structural Design & Construction Engineering Technology and Civil Engineering Programs. He frequently provides seminars and lecturers at national, regional and statewide forums on topics including construction contract documents, construction delivery methods, design and construction errors and omissions, risk management, construction and project management, construction litigation and design professional ethics.

Franklin C. Miller, Jr. focuses his practice on the defense and representation of professionals in the design and construction industry. In this capacity, Mr. Miller has been involved in a wide variety of cases, including the defense of architects and engineers against serious personal injury/wrongful death claims arising from

construction projects, the defense of design professionals from suits brought by property owners alleging design and construction defects and the defense of engineers related to their designs and calculations for integrated building systems such as mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire suppression.

Mr. Miller graduated from the College of William and Mary in 2005 and then attended the Villanova University School of Law, where he received his Juris Doctor in 2008.  After law school, Mr. Miller was the law clerk to the Honorable Bernard A. Moore, of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas.  Prior to focusing his practice on the defense and representation of design professionals Mr. Miller practiced for over four years in a Philadelphia-based defense litigation firm. Mr. Miller is licensed to practice in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.