Architect Exam Podcast088 - The Spearin Doctrine: Who Pays When the Drawings Are Wrong
The Spearin doctrine decides who pays when work is built exactly as drawn, inspected, approved, and it fails anyway. Most people in construction already understand this rule without knowing it has a name. If the owner hands you a detailed set of documents telling you exactly what to build and how, the owner is promising those documents will work. Follow them, and the failure is not yours. This episode walks the test that decides every version of the argument, the three ways a contractor forfeits the protection, and the gap between two very different promises where real project money quietly disappears. 📝 Key topics covered: Design specifications vs performance specifications: who carries the risk Patent defect vs latent defect and the duty to ask Three ways a contractor loses Spearin doctrine protection The Spearin doctrine on design-build and delegated design projects Owner-furnished surveys and geotech reports: the right to rely The Spearin Gap: a guarantee one direction, a standard of care the other ⏱️ Chapters: (0:00) Who Pays When Drawings Fail (1:43) Free ARE Study Notes (2:39) Spearin Doctrine in Plain English (5:11) Design Spec vs Performance Spec (9:33) Spearin 1918: Dry Dock Case (12:06) Site Visit Clauses and Risk (15:19) Spearin Doctrine: Shield or Sword (16:22) Losing Spearin Doctrine Protection (18:57) Spearin Doctrine in Design-Build (21:36) Owner-Furnished Information Risk (24:04) Spearin Gap: Guarantee vs Best Effort (28:06) Applying Spearin on Real Projects (29:44) Spearin Doctrine on the ARE and NCIDQ (30:53) Spearin Doctrine: 5 Things to Know (32:18) Young Architect Academy 📖 Read the full blog post 📝 Download the FREE Spearin Doctrine study notes We answered who pays the contractor. We never answered whether the owner can get it back from the architect, and that answer is the standard of care. PcM 101 covers it under Objective 1.4, opening on a lawsuit over a duct chase running through a beam, then taking the definition apart a phrase at a time, including the contract wording that turns reasonably competent into a promise your insurer will not follow you into. That same wording sits in the contracts an architect signs, which is where AIA Contracts 101 picks up. It takes a dry, text-heavy document and makes it visual, with diagrams, drawings and stories. Both are in the ARE 101 Membership, month to month, cancel anytime. 🎯 Join our 10-week ARE Boot Camp 🎯 Get access to all ARE study materials with the ARE 101 Membership 📚 Individual courses: PcM 101 (Practice Management) AIA Contracts 101 CE 101 (Construction and Evaluation) PjM 101 (Project Management) PDD 101 (Project Development and Documentation) CSI Certifications NCIDQ Exam Prep 📖 Since you just spent an episode on who promised what, here are 3 that connect: Construction Disputes: How Claims Start and How They End. The Spearin doctrine is a sword as much as a shield, and Spearin himself used it to go get paid. This is what that looks like from the inside: how a claim starts, what it costs, and the off-ramps before anybody ends up in front of a judge. Types of Specifications in Construction You Need to Know. We ran the entire doctrine through one test: did the documents say how to build it, or only what it had to do. That is the two-way version, and in practice there are four methods of specifying, each carrying its own answer about who owns the outcome. RFI Meaning in Construction: The Complete Guide. One line in this episode does more work than anything else in it: the RFI is the defense. This one picks that up and runs it through the entire process, including how an RFI differs from a submittal, a change order and an architect's supplemental instruction. Pick one and give it a listen this week.
