Rating: 
Summary: Valuable Advice for Either Side of the Table.
Review: Contract negotiations are often tedious and frustrating. This book was refreshingly useful because it laid out strategies for achieving desired negotitated results. The book's advice and approach can be applied with profit to any contract negotiations, but it's examples are based on negotiating the complicated agreements between Owners and Architects. I've used it with success to explain the Architect's needs and concerns to Owners and, just as frequently, I've used it when representing Owners to explain why a certain compromise and position in negotiations with Architects makes sense. It is a book with balanced advice on how to negotiate in general and how to do so in particular in the Owner/Architect context. It's many specific examples and suggested solutions to typical negotiation issues have saved me hours of time attempting to articulate to opposing counsel or my clients what the author has already compiled in this book.I've found its contents so useful that I've taught portions of seminars to Architects, Contractors and Owners using lessons and insights taken from the book. The attendees always have commented favorably on the concrete, practical advice they have learned from those portions of the seminar. This is a valuable book. If you're involved in any negotiations, especially construction, it is worth purchasing.
Rating:
Summary: Valuable Advice for Either Side of the Table.
Review: Contract negotiations are often tedious and frustrating. This book was refreshingly useful because it laid out strategies for achieving desired negotitated results. The book's advice and approach can be applied with profit to any contract negotiations, but it's examples are based on negotiating the complicated agreements between Owners and Architects. I've used it with success to explain the Architect's needs and concerns to Owners and, just as frequently, I've used it when representing Owners to explain why a certain compromise and position in negotiations with Architects makes sense. It is a book with balanced advice on how to negotiate in general and how to do so in particular in the Owner/Architect context. It's many specific examples and suggested solutions to typical negotiation issues have saved me hours of time attempting to articulate to opposing counsel or my clients what the author has already compiled in this book. I've found its contents so useful that I've taught portions of seminars to Architects, Contractors and Owners using lessons and insights taken from the book. The attendees always have commented favorably on the concrete, practical advice they have learned from those portions of the seminar. This is a valuable book. If you're involved in any negotiations, especially construction, it is worth purchasing.
Rating:
Summary: Required reading
Review: Every construction law library should have this book in its arsenal. Ava provides valuable insight into the elements of successful negotiations. It is easy to read and follow, yet offers so much to anyone involved in a construction practice. Construction lawyers should really pay attention to the section on "A Word to my Legal Colleagues". This provides incredibly good advice to those people who want to serve as counsellors to their clients. You will find this book to be one of the most useful additions to your library and required reading for every attorney in your office.
Rating:
Summary: Architect's Essentials of Contract Negotiation
Review: For several years I've enjoyed attending Ava Abramowitz's presentations at AIA conferences and conventions. She makes contract law and negotiation strategies, topics that I'd normally consider dry at best, into subjects that are both stimulating and fascinating. Her new book is just as much fun to read as her presentations are to attend, and her words teach one not only about negotiating the contracts that define our relationships with our clients, but also about human behavior in general. Her ability to explain with anecdotes makes each lesson memorable. Although this book is ostensibly for architects, it seems to me it would be useful for anyone wanting to learn the basics of negotiating their way through life. As the author points out, we negotiate everything from what you want for dinner each night, to whether our children can watch TV before they've done their homework. It's an incredibly important part of life. We all do it. We just don't always understand that we're doing it, and are often surprised at the consequences. Ava Abramowitz's book will help you negotiate with your eyes open, and with an intelligence that isn't rocket science but isn't always obvious until someone has shown you the ground rules. I highly recommend this book
Rating:
Summary: Architect's Essentials of Contract Negotiation
Review: For several years I've enjoyed attending Ava Abramowitz's presentations at AIA conferences and conventions. She makes contract law and negotiation strategies, topics that I'd normally consider dry at best, into subjects that are both stimulating and fascinating. Her new book is just as much fun to read as her presentations are to attend, and her words teach one not only about negotiating the contracts that define our relationships with our clients, but also about human behavior in general. Her ability to explain with anecdotes makes each lesson memorable. Although this book is ostensibly for architects, it seems to me it would be useful for anyone wanting to learn the basics of negotiating their way through life. As the author points out, we negotiate everything from what you want for dinner each night, to whether our children can watch TV before they've done their homework. It's an incredibly important part of life. We all do it. We just don't always understand that we're doing it, and are often surprised at the consequences. Ava Abramowitz's book will help you negotiate with your eyes open, and with an intelligence that isn't rocket science but isn't always obvious until someone has shown you the ground rules. I highly recommend this book
Rating:
Summary: Better than Getting To Yes
Review: I am not an architect, but I loved this book. It clearly laid out steps real people can take to negotiate tough problems -- whether construction-related or not. The chapter on communication skills and the one on dispute resolution alone were worth the price of the book. In fact, I would say, as a senior manager of a growing business, that anyone who seeks to accomplish anything important in any business would benefit from the information this book contains. It should be required reading for all.
Rating:
Summary: a great book about negotiation and communication
Review: I teach architecture students a course on professional practice and have made Architect's Essentials of Contract Negotiation required reading. Of all the sources I've read on this topic, Ava Abramowitz offers the most accessible and well-reasoned explanations of what every design professional must understand about negotiation (and communication). Abramowitz's many years of experience as a counselor, teacher and mentor to architects has clearly given her insight into how architects think, and she uses this insight to great effect. My students enjoy reading this text (especially Chapters 3&4) because it connects to the way they see the world (and helps focus that vision) in language that rings true. Don't be fooled by the word "Contracts" in the title; this is a great book about architects and negotiation in general and one that I believe all architects should own.
Rating: 
Summary: Student review
Review: Negotiation is critical factor of basic, daily human interactions, but how often do you think about what you are doing? Have you ever asked yourself the basic questions: Am I getting what I really want? Am I as effective and persuasive as I could be? Are both parties benefiting from this agreement? Negotiation is something we do every day but seldom give much thought to it. In her new book, The Architect's Essentials of Contract Negotiation, Ava Abramowitz succeeds in outlining and explaining the critical components for successful negotiation. In an easy to read and sensible manner, she outlines the principles, tools and techniques needed for successful negotiation. The book is divided into easily accessible chapters focused on key components of general negotiation, contract understanding and practice exercises. The book is arranged in such a manner that it may be used as a quick reference guide or read full through, with each chapter building on the next. An example of the materials addressed, is the chapter on different types of negotiation, hard, soft and principal based. In this section Ms. Abramowitz analyzes negotiations techniques of soft (participants are friends), hard (participants are adversaries) and principled (participants are problem solvers). This tackling of old ideas and presenting new, research based techniques is what really gives this book its edge. Written for a wide audience, The Architects Essentials of Contract Negotiation is an essential read for any student interested in improving basic negotiation skills or understanding contracts. In its comprehensive yet sensible manner, Ms. Abramowitz sheds light on a highly valuable subject years before students are exposed to it in formal academia.
Rating:
Summary: Student review
Review: Negotiation is critical factor of basic, daily human interactions, but how often do you think about what you are doing? Have you ever asked yourself the basic questions: Am I getting what I really want? Am I as effective and persuasive as I could be? Are both parties benefiting from this agreement? Negotiation is something we do every day but seldom give much thought to it. In her new book, The Architect's Essentials of Contract Negotiation, Ava Abramowitz succeeds in outlining and explaining the critical components for successful negotiation. In an easy to read and sensible manner, she outlines the principles, tools and techniques needed for successful negotiation. The book is divided into easily accessible chapters focused on key components of general negotiation, contract understanding and practice exercises. The book is arranged in such a manner that it may be used as a quick reference guide or read full through, with each chapter building on the next. An example of the materials addressed, is the chapter on different types of negotiation, hard, soft and principal based. In this section Ms. Abramowitz analyzes negotiations techniques of soft (participants are friends), hard (participants are adversaries) and principled (participants are problem solvers). This tackling of old ideas and presenting new, research based techniques is what really gives this book its edge. Written for a wide audience, The Architects Essentials of Contract Negotiation is an essential read for any student interested in improving basic negotiation skills or understanding contracts. In its comprehensive yet sensible manner, Ms. Abramowitz sheds light on a highly valuable subject years before students are exposed to it in formal academia.
Rating:
Summary: An Essential for Every Architect's Library
Review: The operative word in this third volume of Wiley's new series called "Architect's Essentials" is in the title: "essential".
Art Gensler, in a thoughtful, glowing Introduction, sums it up with: "Ava Abramowitz has written a book that should be an essential part of every architectural professional's library and a must-read for every student taking professional practice courses". I couldn't agree more. My first reaction to this book is as a technical writer: Ava has produced, quite simply, the most accessible technical book that I have ever read. If you have been in one of her workshops, you will remember that she knows how to keep a room full of architects wide awake for two hours after lunch, and that most there will give her presentation a five out of five rating.
Well, she writes like she talks. We architects are famously words-averse; we prefer pictures. Ava paints rich word pictures, then cannily grabs you by the necktie and puts you in the middle of the picture. Reading her book is as close as you can get to a face-to-face conversation in print. Her writing style is what the thriller publishers call a "page-turner" - but you won't read more than a dozen pages without putting it down and thinking hard about some aspect of your practice. For those of us who write for the severely right-brained, the bar has just been raised about a foot. Tough act to follow.
Now, my reactions as an architect: This is primarily a book on contract negotiation, as the title says - particularly about professional services agreement negotiation. But it is much more than that - contract negotiation is just a doorway to her vision of the future of practice. Every authoritative writer in our field that I know of agrees that our professional is in the midst of the most profound change in its 4,000 year history. If you sense these winds of change, and your reaction is one of your practice and your profession being victimized and marginalized, then don't buy her book - you are a buggy-whip maker looking at a Model-T Ford, and you might as well keep practicing until your business dies of irrelevance.
But if you sense these winds of change and are sure there must be a new and better way, her work is the Swiss Army knife that will get you out of the James Bond torture chamber. She marches you step by sure step from the mentality of a service provider whose output can be bought as a commodity to one who is the client's trusted advisor, whose value can't be measured. She calls this "assertive practice". I won't attempt to summarize the details, for this, buy the book. Her principles of negotiation are as clear and easy to understand as the best. Her section on communication is short, sharp and precise. Her five phases of dispute resolution and six steps for managing change are without equal for simplicity and clarity.
Throughout, she richly illustrates her points with personal anecdotes from her years as Deputy General Counsel to the AIA, Vice President of Victor O. Schinnerer & Co., and her current involvement as owner/developer/restorer of some 30 buildings on a Virginia farm. If you are a young architect starting out in business, and could only afford five books in your professional library, this has to be on your short list. If you are a seasoned veteran of the practice wars, you will agree with Gensler: "I truly wish I had had the opportunity to read The Architect's Essentials of Contract Negotiation years ago." If you are in between, say an associate level architect with aspirations for leadership, the skills Ava teaches so eloquently will propel you to partnership faster than anything else you could do short of marrying the chairman's ugly son or daughter.
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