Excavator warned in writing about groundwater, billed by the hour, and is now blowing up the GC's budget

The owner of the 10-year-old excavation firm described the job on Reddit's r/Construction forum. According to the post, no local company had bid the municipal project, he proposed a design change and waiting for a dry weather window, and the advice was ignored. He is asking whether he should do something about the overrun.

On paper, the risk sits with the party paying the hours. A time-and-materials deal without a ceiling bills the labor and materials actually used. A not-to-exceed clause is what moves the risk back: once billings reach the cap, the contractor absorbs the rest unless a change order is signed first, as the field-timekeeping company SmartBarrel explains in its guide to such contracts. According to the post, this job has no cap.

The general contractor's problem sits upstream. Under the AIA A201 general conditions, a contractor that hits subsurface conditions materially different from the contract documents must tell the owner and the architect before touching them, and within 14 days. AIA Contract Documents' own guidance says the analysis starts with the drawings, specifications and borings, and that a bidder's private assumption is not a contract indication. In this case the excavator's warning came before the digging did.

For the sub, the same AIA guidance reads as a checklist: date-stamped photos, daily reports, labor and equipment records kept under a separate cost code, and notices sent through the channel the contract names. Weekly hour reports to the hiring contractor leave little room to call the overrun a surprise.