A lawyer discusses renovating commercial space.

Every business owner knows that "time is money." If you are trying to open a business that is being renovated in time for your busy season or for an upcoming event within the company, nothing can be more stressful than to not have the space be ready to move into.

Each day the business is closed you lose money, yet you are powerless to get it completed within your time frame. If that is your worst nightmare, let's go back in time and talk about what you can do as a business owner to prevent this from happening to you.

While every construction project shares certain common elements, no two projects are the same and therefore no two contracts for the design and construction can be the same. All too often, business owners spend too much time worrying about the design, then sign any old contract just to get the work started. The optimum time to negotiate deal points for an owner is before the work starts. Once the work has begun, you are like any nervous business owner who will do "almost" anything to be done with construction. That is not where you want to be.

Although no one can anticipate every unknown that might arise on a project, most things can be anticipated and dealt with in the contract, so that there are fewer negotiations during the project. Once a client explains the project to me, I can draft appropriate language to address the issues. For example, certain unit prices can be anticipated, as well as certain changes in the work. These can be drafted into the contract so that everyone is in agreement before the event occurs.

Most commercial tenants know that they must obtain certificates of insurance from contractors before the work is started. It is generally a requirement of the lease. What few people know is that even though a certificate is provided with the names of additional insureds on it, there may still not be coverage when you need it. A contractor gives you a certificate of insurance for a project and names the commercial tenant and its landlord as additional insureds. However, if there is no contract provision requiring insurance, there may not be coverage afforded to the landlord and tenant under the contractor's policy.

As an attorney who handles these types of matters routinely, I must say that administering the construction as it is underway is the next big issue on commercial projects. Firms of a certain size may have in-house facilities managers to help oversee the work. However, the smaller firms do not have such in-house expertise and have to go outside the company for assistance. There are owner's representatives and construction managers who handle these needs. However, tenants must spend the time to get advice from legal counsel knowledgeable in this area before entering into contracts for these services.

Recently an owner asked me to review a construction management agreement and to discuss my thoughts with the construction manager. One of my comments was that some of the fee seemed to be double billing. When I pointed this out to the construction manager, he sheepishly said "Well I guess it is, but that's the way we always bill and no one has ever questioned it before." My client then proceeded to get prices from some other companies to compare pricing before going forward and negotiating further with this construction manager.

Architects and interior designers are not interchangeable professions. Before one or the other is hired, the tenant should review this with legal counsel. There are projects where the client hires an interior designer to do the project. The interior designer hires an architect to prepare the construction drawings and the building architect incorporates those designs into his drawings to file with the Building Department. If there is ever a litigation problem, it will be very difficult to sort out responsibility.

When the tenant tries to sue the interior designer, he may find that he does not have the coverage he expected him to have, since he is not an architect.

Change orders are another big source of problems. If the tenant allows the contractor to amass unsigned change orders, then to present them in a pile after the work has been done, he is asking for trouble. Tenants have the least power to negotiate at that point. The work has been done and the contractor can threaten to file a mechanic's lien against the building, which the building owner will not be happy about.

I have heard tenants very angrily say when an architect asks for more money, "I can find someone else." Technically you can, but you may not assume that you can finish the project with their drawings, even though you may have paid them to date. They think that they "own" the drawings, when, in fact, they do not.

It sounds almost too obvious to say that there should be a written, signed contract, but in many instances when people go back to their files to re-examine the contract, they find it wasn't fully signed. The designer or contractor may have signed and sent it to the client and never got back a fully executed contract. Work may have started and the parties never wound up never signing one.

Don't cut corners on contracts and legal services. The process of negotiating and customizing the contracts causes the parties to iron out the details before the project begins and saves money in the long run.