Construction Advice and Litigation

To facilitate the success of a project from its beginning, Lozano Smith coordinates with its clients to ensure that their delivery methods comply with current (and sometimes complex) legal requirements. Every project is different, and our CAL attorneys can help your agency choose from the various project alternatives that exist to best meet project goals.

Lozano Smith advises clients about advantages and disadvantages of the delivery methods, especially design-build due to its increased availability.

Effective planning at the outset of a project, along with a thorough understanding of the associated legal, economic and political challenges, provides an agency with the best opportunity to deliver a project successfully without legal conflict at its conclusion.

Lozano Smith has special expertise addressing issues unique to our school district clients. We often assist school districts with legal issues ranging from state funding to obtaining site approvals for new schools, helping them navigate the channels of the State Allocation Board, Office of Public School Construction, and California Department of Education.

After determining your delivery method, nothing is more critical to the success of your project than solid contracts to govern your relationships with your construction team members, including architects, engineers, construction managers, inspectors, and contractors. Lozano Smith draws on its vast experience in reviewing and litigating contracts to develop documents for our clients that emphasize clarity, reasonableness, and protection of our clients' rights. We draft contracts to help maximize the chances of finishing projects on time and on budget, while protecting the public agency owner from frivolous claims.

In addition to review of a public agency's current documents, we also offer sets of form contracts and related documents ready for a public agency's immediate use. These sets are updated at least annually to reflect changes in the law and best practices.

During the bidding stage, our CAL attorneys assist public agencies with pre-qualification procedures, bid protests relating to bid responsiveness and contractor responsibility, and bid withdrawals.

Lozano Smith collaborates with public agencies and their construction consultants to provide sound legal advice when a dispute arises during a project. By understanding the key factors of a dispute, our attorneys can efficiently advise a client on the immediate legal issues at hand, while at the same time preserving rights and evidence for later claims. We believe in open lines of communication between all members of the construction team and maintenance of good working relationships with contractors and consultants, while simultaneously protecting our client's interests.

Our CAL attorneys have managed and resolved disputes with contractors, subcontractors, construction managers, sureties, architects, and engineers during projects. For those occasions when work is significantly delayed, we have significant experience helping agencies get the project back on track — usually by convincing the contractor to increase its efforts, but if necessary by terminating the contractor and finishing the project with the surety or others. We also have experience with contractor defaults, and we can get your project out of the bankruptcy court as quickly as possible.

Our mission is to do everything possible to help our clients complete their projects as quickly as reasonably possible, thus minimizing claims after completion.

For completion of the work and financial closeout, our CAL attorneys help public agencies negotiate the maze of statutory requirements to avoid late payment penalties and other pitfalls. We advise public agencies on the delicate matters of withholding payments to protect an agency's interests, while not jeopardizing expeditious completion of the project. For stop payment notices, we emphasize quick extrication from any enforcement lawsuit with recovery of attorneys’ fees when possible.

At the end of a project, public agencies typically look to our firm to help resolve any remaining disputes and claims as quickly as possible, but also on reasonable and acceptable terms. Lozano Smith assists public agencies in meeting this goal by guiding them during a project toward a position of strength for closeout negotiations. For these negotiations, we evaluate our clients' options, the merits of the claims, and the cost of litigation in order to develop a dispute resolution plan tailored to our clients' goals.

We also understand the unique challenges facing our school district clients that can prevent timely completion of a project or jeopardize state financing. We are experienced in working with construction professionals to ensure that each project receives Division of State Architect close-out. Furthermore, our attorneys have advised countless school districts on post-construction Office of Public School Construction audits to ensure that State Funding is not revoked after the project is completed.

Few industries rely as heavily on alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”) as the construction industry, and Lozano Smith leads the way with extensive ADR experience during construction, closeout, and litigation. Our CAL attorneys have mediated or otherwise resolved hundreds of disputes and claims – not only after closeout (including statutory ADR procedures), but even during construction in an effort to keep the project on track.

Even if ADR is not successful, our attorneys will learn more about the other party's positions that will shape litigation strategy. In addition, we have arbitrated disputes when appropriate to quickly and less expensively resolve disputes with finality.