Can’t you come up with a cheaper alternative?” is not an unreasonable question. However, in an effort to accommodate client representatives’ preferences, geotechnical engineers of record (GERs) will all too often acquiesce to changes that create new and sometimes-severe risks. Later, after those risks materialize into full-fledged problems, GERs get blamed and ultimately have to deal with professional-negligence, breach-of-contract, and similar claims, commonly because they failed to issue a written warning about the new risks pursuing the alternative would entail.

The guide’s six chapters provide guidance geotechnical engineers can apply to help deal with the risks responses to “Can’t you come up with a cheaper alternative?” can create. Chapter titles are:

Using a Group-By-Group Approach, Educate Client Representatives, Prospective-Client Representatives, and Those Who Influence Them
Educate Clients and Their Intermediaries on a Case-by-Case Basis
Develop a Contract Provision
Do What Professionals Are Supposed to Do
Recommend Value Engineering; and
Be Prepared

Authored by John Philip Bachner, the guide points out that, “with few exceptions, GERs have already considered the ‘cheaper alternatives,’ and have rejected them, because the risk they entail makes it extremely difficult to achieve risk/reward balance [for the client].” As Bachner also notes, “More construction problems arise from subsurface issues than any other source.”