Beginning in early February, courts, judges or clerks required by the Ohio Revised Code to publish public notices multiple times in a newspaper will be able to turn to a free statewide website as an alternative.

As you are probably aware, as of December 26 the new construction reform laws became effective.  As a result, we have made some changes to our website, and we have posted tailored versions of the General Contractor contract form.

On April 3, 2011 the State Architect's Office (SAO) posted the new March 2011 version of the construction contracts and related forms.  You can see all the changes that were made to the forms in the Version Control Document, M140-01-00 00 02-VC, posted on the SAO's website at http://das.ohio.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=vuRgL9V9t4c%3d&tabid=363.

The main substantive changes relate to some new Business Processes in OAKS CI, the use of field supervision labor for Change Orders, and the new ethics language, which is discussed below.  Tailored versions of the construction contracts are now available on our website for use by two year and four year institutions.  All other construction documents should be downloaded from the State Architect's Office website.

We now have tailored versions of the new Architect/ Engineer Agreements, including an Architect/ Engineer Agreement with a Construction Manager, and an Architect/ Engineer Agreement with Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (“LEED”) requirements.

Over the past few months we have enjoyed receiving your input on the state construction contracts and working with the State Architect's Office to incorporate some of your suggestions into the latest version of the Architect/Engineer and construction contracts. We appreciate all of your comments and suggestions, and we reviewed all of them and shared them with the State Architect's Office. Due to various considerations, not all of the comments from our clients have been included in the latest version of the contracts. However, some of the comments are still being discussed for possible inclusion in the next edition of the state construction documents.