Model Contract For Engineers And Their Clients

We are frequently consulted on disputes over the wording of contracts between environmental engineers and their clients. Some contracts are just badly drafted, so it's hard to know what they mean. Others are clearly drafted, but don't describe what the client was promised. Some deprive clients of virtually all meaningful remedies for shoddy work.

One common problem is limitation of liability clauses. Many engineering firms put in their contracts clauses that limit their liability to the lesser of, say, $50,000 or their fees, whichever is less, no matter how badly they perform. For many contaminated sites in the GTA, $50,000 is just not a meaningful amount of money; it is rarely enough to complete the work that the client had already paid for.