IHMO, in the roaring 90's, the trend in golf construction was towards quality and away from strict budgets. Many architects stressed perfect plans and quantities much less than in other economic climates. As a result, most contractors would, no matter what the specs say, argue in favor of a unit price contract! And, in most cases, that is a pretty fair way to go. In that scenario, I always feel the responsibility to get the quantities within a few percentage points.
The hardest thing to measure is dirt. I rarely try, except to generally satisfy myself that the approximate quantity is moved. In some cases, like raising the greens to a certain flood plain level, you can 't let them slide. In other cases, the contractor may realize you want vision to a green, but fill it less and cut the fairway more than I planned to acheive the same goal, in which case, I just don't care. Usually, field conditions mean that they move more dirt in some places, but less in others.
I think Bill is referring to one sided owners or architects who use a lump sum bid, but keep increasing the quantities. Sometimes, extending a path, or even moving it to the other side of the fairway can add signifigantly to plan quantities, and the contractor should get paid for it, since hes paying a sub and supplier more. Of course, many contractors get the reputation for shading things the other way, perhaps not extending the cart path all the way to the back tee as shown on plan. In most cases, we'll draw the plan where we think it should go, the owner will tell us to cut budget, whereupon we shorten the path, and then, when all are in the field, everyone realizes that it needs to go in as originally drawn.
So, its not really fair to the contractor to just have to add it. Generally, its the owners project, and he should be responsible for paying for what he wants.
The grey areas are whether plans really depict what the contractor submitted a price for. In a competitive bid situation , they intrepret the plans to their benefit, and contractually, they must ask those questions during bidding, and the architect does the intrepretation, so that all bidders have the same knowledge of what is expected.
It's surprising how often contractors don
't bring their questions to you until after the bid! In those cases, the architect must intrerpret the plans, which may cost the contractor more than he wanted. Granted, however, if arhictects enforced all specs to the "Tee" contractors would go broke. If they bid like they expected the architect to enforce each spec as written, without any give, they wouldn't get the bid.
On the other hand, those types of disputes occur on virtually every job, and the Owner, and sometimes archtect suspects the contractor is simply trying to cut corners. Sometimes, I feel like I should come to the job wearing referees stripes! And, as you consider whether an architects fee is worth it, remember that much of our time is spent in contract administration, and not just the fun stuff of field modifying a design for greatness.
That's why we like working with only experienced contractors, since they are definitely fewer in number.
Many of my spec clauses come from contractors finding loopholes in the specs to reduce their quantities.