December 10 – Construction - CR10
Negotiating and Administering Effective Claims and Change Order Procedures in Public Construction Contracts
This program will introduce municipal practitioners to effective, owner-protective change order and claims language and procedures to use in Public Contracts. The key elements for change order notice, cost-substantiation, pricing change orders, owner directed changes, dispute resolution and the role of the A/E in the change order process will be analyzed. Participants will be exposed to different change order provisions commonly used in contracts and will learn the “traps for the unwary” that arise from application of standard, industry-driven change order processes. Participants will review actual case studies applying various claims and change order provisions in payment disputes arising under a contract and see how the language you draft and how you administer the procedure can drastically impact the outcome of the claim and the final price of the Work.
Speaker: Steven Torres s a Partner with Pannone Lopes Devereaux & West LLC and a member of the firm's Municipal Infrastructure Team. Attorney Torres is a highly skilled and experienced municipal construction and public-private partnership project advisor and legal counsel who has managed in excess of $1 billion in project value in the areas of utilities, water and wastewater, transportation, building construction and renewable energy. He has vast experience and deep knowledge in matters related to municipal law and regulations including zoning, land use planning, and building and environmental permitting. Attorney Torres has also negotiated and administered millions of dollars in Tax Increment Finance Agreements for cities and towns. In addition, as a former legal counsel for public and private sector unions in New England, Mr. Torres has handled over 300 labor arbitrations and mediations in collective bargaining and employment disputes.
Attorney Torres is nationally recognized in his practice area and a frequent lecturer, guest speaker and teacher/mentor to other practitioners. He is a former member of the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Public Law Section Council, and a past member of the Executive Committee of the City Solicitors and Town Counsel Association. He is also an author, editor and lecturer for the Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education (MCLE), and co-edited the Supplement Edition of MCLE's "Massachusetts Municipal Law". Attorney Torres has had several essays published in the areas of labor law, international law, municipal law and constitutional law. He is a sought after speaker on municipal law, renewable energy and emerging technology and alternative delivery construction project development. Attorney Torres has been a national panelist for the Design-Build Institute of America, the National league of Cities, the International Municipal Lawyers Association, the Solid Waste Association of North America, the Massachusetts Municipal Association and the Massachusetts City Solicitors and Town Counsel Association and other national and regional organizations.
Prior to joining Pannone Lopes Devereaux & West LLC, Attorney Torres served for thirteen years as a city attorney for four consecutive mayoral administrations in two cities. He was Corporate Counsel for the City of Fall River, MA and responsible for the leadership of many municipal building projects, including design-build-finance-operate emerging technology energy projects, school building and utility design and construction projects.
From 2000 until 2009, he served as City Solicitor for the City of Taunton, MA under three mayoral administrations. During this time, Attorney Torres accomplished one of the first Construction Manager (CM) at risk school building construction projects in Massachusetts and led a team to develop a $500 million waste-to-fuels project under a design-build-operate (DBO) model using emerging technology.
He earned his J.D. from Suffolk University Law School, cum laude, and received his undergraduate degree in computer science from Daniel Webster College. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1987-1990 as a nuclear operations officer. He is admitted to practice law in New York and Massachusetts and is a member of the Massachusetts Bar Association and the New York Bar Association.