3 and 4. Plans and Specifications; Sketches and Instructions. These are furnished by the owner as in the lump sum contract.
5. Plant. The contractors who do work on a "cost plus a fixed sum" basis, do not, as a gen eral thing, own much plant themselves, and the owner is in the position of either purchasing or renting plant. If the contractor happens to own plant which he can turn over for this kind of work, he usually does so on a rental basis—so much per day or per month. This rental clause is really a separate contract by itself, since, after the renting has taken place, the plant is under the direct control of the owner through his agent, the contractor, and if accidents happen to it, the owner is responsible. Some contractors, particularly where the amount of plant involved is small, will agree in their contracts to furnish the necessary plant out of their own stock, the rental for plant, or compensation for its use, be ing waived. This feature is not so satisfactory from the owner's point of view as might at first appear, because the contractor is tempted to use a minimum amount of plant and one which may not be the most suitable for the work; and there fore, if the owner furnished or rented his own plant, it might be more suited to the particular class of work to be done and thus ultimately re sult to the economic advantage of the job.
6. Labor. Generally the contractor knows where he can find men to employ on the class of work to be done, and he engages the men as the representative or agent of the owner. When ha pays them out of his own bank account from funds supplied by the owner in the first place, the contractor usually acts as paymaster; but in the case where the contractor is not to handle any money, the paymaster is outside of the con tractor's organization entirely. Under this ar rangement, the men learn immediately what kind of contract is being carried, and they are likely to get the idea that efficiency does not count much in the results of the work, and there fore are disposed to "soldier;" whereas, if they thought that they were working for the contrac tor, and the contractor's vital financial interest was at stake, they would be more inclined to expect to lose their places if they did not work well and rapidly.
that this protects the owner against graft; but it is not difficult to see how it would be possible for a dishonest contractor, after getting bids for ma terials, to accept upon delivery an inferior grade of materials and receive from the dealer furnish ing them a rake-off for himself. Unless the owner put someone on the site to supervise the work with great care and inspect all materials as they came in, it would be difficult for him to prevent this. To be sure, this inspecting is the duty of the architect; but to inspect sufficiently well to provide against such contingencies would mean that specifications as to materials would have to be very accurately drawn in the first place, and, in the second place, that the architect would have to spend a great deal more time in inspecting than he is likely to spend. Where the contractor orders for the owner, he is prac tically in the position of a purchasing agent for materials, with all the advantages and disad vantages that ordinarily pertain to purchasing agents in general—with this difference, that, if the owner does not like the way he does his work, instead of discharging him as he does a purchas ing agent, the owner has got to spend time and extra money and do the purchasing himself.
As against these things that the owner fur nishes, we have the items that are supplied by the contractor: 1. Organization. This has been discussed above, and is not essentially different here, in its economic features, from the case of the lump sum and unit-price contracts. The contractor is seldom in a position to throw upon any particu lar piece of work an organization of his own, be cause, when this organization is good, it is occu pied on other work and cannot come to a new position except with some injustice to the work already on hand. As a general thing, when the contractor is not busy, he cuts down his force to the very smallest possible minimum, in order to save himself from carrying expensive men with out financial return; and then he has no one in his employ to throw upon new work. However, it is his business to keep in touch with men all over the country whom he can get for his work when he has work to do, and therefore, if he has had much experience, it is not difficult for him to get together in a comparatively short time an organization of men whom he knows something about personally, and in whom he feels that he and the men can have confidence.