CCDC-30:
The new Integrated Project Delivery
contract takes design and construction
collaboration and risk sharing to a new level
Geza Banfai discusses CCDC 30 at an Ottawa workshop.

Canadian Design and Construction Report staff writer
The Canadian Construction Documents Committee
(CCDC) has introduced a new standard form contract for
Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) – reflecting the current
trend towards projects where design and construction
are collaborative, with shared risk and opportunities for
profit if things go right, and penalties and risk-limiting
controls if they go wrong.

CCDC chair Mark Mulholland, vice-president project
delivery services operations at BGIS, and construction
lawyer Geza Banfai from McMillan LP, outlined the con-
cepts behind the new CCDC 30 contract and explained
how it compares to other construction contract models at
a May 4 workshop in Ottawa, one of several held across
the country.

“CCDC 30 reads like nothing you are really used to,”
Mulholland said. “It’s intensely collaborative. If you can’t
play nicely in the sandbox, there are mechanisms to have
you thrown out. The risk pool to my mind is the element
of the contractual arrangements that give it its power.”
Success is very clear because the parties spend a
great degree of time on mutually agreeing upon the price,
scope, schedule, and quality. “When you achieve suc-
cess, you get your risk pool,” he said. If the project goes
above budget, and the final cost burns into the contingen-
cies, pre-identified by mutual agreement, “then you are
into the risk pool and the owner is now spending your
profit.” However, if the project is way off budget, “the owner
continues to pay the costs if they are above the risk pool
and contingencies.”
“Owners like it, because the risk of costs increasing
above the top line is closely and collaboratively man-
aged,” Banfai said. “Contractors like it, because at least
they are going to (recover) their costs. In the worst case
scenario, they aren’t going to get a profit but they are
going to get their costs.”
Of course, the process requires quite a bit of co-ordi-
nation and planning, since the key players including the
owner, design consultants, general contractor, and key
subtrades need to participate as a team from the start,
even as they compete for the contract, which will be for a
building for which there is not yet a design.

“On day one, when CCDC 30 is signed, as of this date,
there is no project yet,” Banfai said. “There may be a bud-
get but it’s just a thumbnail. There’s no scope, there’s no
design, even all of the parties may not be confirmed. At
this point, the project is a gleam in the owner’s eye.”
The first stage, Banfai said, is the “validation phase”.

The Canadian Design and Construction Report — Spring 2018 – 5