October 10, 2008

National Trade Contractors Coalition of Canada

NTCCC plans to publish guide to CCA’s stipulated price subcontract document

PATRICIA WILLIAMS

staff writer

Preparation of a trade contractors’ guide to the Canadian Construction Association’s recently revised standard stipulated price subcontract document is nearing the home stretch.

The guide is being drafted for the National Trade Contractors Coalition of Canada by Toronto lawyer Geza Banfai, a partner in Blaney McMurtry, with input from a broad cross-section of coalition members.

Designed to be user-friendly, the 60-page guide will hit the streets following the impending publication of CCA document 1-2008. That is expected this month, Banfai said.

The guide is intended to educate the industry about “the one consensus-based subcontract document in use across Canada” and its advantages for users, Banfai said in an interview.

“As with any balanced contract, there are risks and responsibilities that must be assumed by each party,” said Banfai, a member of DCN’s editorial advisory board and founding chair of his firm’s architectural/construction/engineering services group.

“So, another objective is to highlight those parts of the contract that users need to be mindful of in order to avoid unintended liabilities.”

Generally, Banfai said, the guide is intended to encourage broader usage of the standard CCA subcontract form “or at least consideration of that form as an example of sensible risk allocation and a source of prevailing industry best practices.”The document was last published in 2001.

“The basic objective of the revisions is to achieve better consistency between the new CCDC 2 document and its accompanying subcontract form,” Banfai said.

Banfai, a fellow of the Canadian College of Construction Lawyers, gave a presentation on the new subcontract document at the recent 67th annual national conference of the Mechanical Contractors Association of Canada, a founding member of the NTCCC.

“There are a lot of good, common-sense clauses in there that we wanted our members to be familiar with (and promote usage),” said MCAC president Richard McKeagan, whose association represents close to 1,000 companies across Canada.

Other coalition members are the Canadian Electrical Contractors Association, Canadian Masonry Contractors Association, Canadian Automatic Sprinkler Association, Canadian Roofing Contractors Association, Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Contractors of Canada and the Ontario Sheet Metal & Air Handling Group.

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