In the NCARB ARE5 Handbook, redlining is presented as billable hours. I would have thought that quality assurance is the firm’s way to prevent future issues, but not specifically billed to a project. Is there a difference between quality assurance and redlining in this case?
When considered the fee for service, is redlining counted as an estimated maximum number of hours or is the owner required to reimburse for those hours regardless of their number?
The time to edit must be incorporated into your fee for each project.
Redlining is an integral part of creating project documents; no drawing set is perfect in the first draft, but you can’t charge extra for providing correct drawings.
Also, redlining is more than internal QA/QC, it’s also part of the consultant coordination duties to review their sets, and comment on errors.
Perhaps someone can point to a section in the B101 that pertains to this?
You also have to think about who is doing the redlining - at a smaller firm that may be the PM or the Principal in Charge, not a QA/QC team. At my firm, it is both - not only am I doing QA/QC on the project in terms of redlining and coordination, our dedicated QA/QC staff is also reviewing at certain milestones. You would make sure to have the hours for this staff on the particular project accounted for in the fee.