Business Resources from NASBP.ORG: New NASBP Bond Forms Debut

NASBP constantly strives to make business tools and resources available to the NASBP membership from our web site. You may be familiar, for example, with the Technology surveys or with the Producers Tool Kit, which is a collection of standardized business forms for use by surety bonding agencies. Created and maintained by the NASBP Automation and Technology Committee, the Producers Tool Kit includes the following forms:

• Bank/Credit Reference Form
• Bid Bond Request Form
• Contract Bond Request Form
• Contractor Questionnaire
• Credit Report Authorization and Privacy Disclosure Form
• Financial Statement Analysis
• Performance and Payment Bond Request Form
• Personal Financial Statement
• Service/Supply Contractor Questionnaire
• Status Inquiry Form
• Work in Progress (Detailed)
• Work in Progress (Simple)

NASBP posts useful information about the current bond forms, AIA Document A310-2010 and AIA Document A312-2010, published by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), including information on how they may be ordered and the AIA Bond Form Commentary and Comparison, which provides detailed information about changes from the prior editions and discussion about their importance.

NASBP also makes available downloads of certain standardized bond forms from its web site. NASBP negotiated arrangements with ConsensusDOCS and with the Engineers Joint Contract Documents Committee (EJCDC) to furnish their standardized bond forms free of charge to NASBP members and affiliates for use in the regular course of surety business. ConsensusDOCS currently offers eleven different bond forms, including forms for subcontract bonds and for performance and payment bonds on design-build projects. The EJCDC bond forms available from nasbp.org are EJCDC C-610 Performance Bond and EJCDC C-615 Payment Bond. As a condition of download and use, members and affiliates must agree to the respective licenses.

To those sets of bond forms, NASBP now is adding an additional set of bond forms. Through discussions with the AIA over the course of the last year, NASBP has secured the permission of AIA to create NASBP-equivalents of the current editions of their bid bond document, AIA Document A310-2010, and their performance bond and payment bond document, AIA Document A312-2010. The NASBP equivalents are simply titled “Bid Bond” and “Performance Bond and Payment Bond.” Footer language on each page indicates that the document is published by NASBP and is the text equivalent of the respective AIA bond form. Like the ConsensusDOCS and EJCDC bond forms, NASBP bond forms  require agreement to a user license. The NASBP bond forms which are the equivalents to the current AIA bond forms are available as downloads of Microsoft Word files, so members and affiliates will have an easy time integrating the forms into their management systems.

Here are some other membership benefits of which to make note. NASBP members, affiliates and associates can receive a discount of up to 20% off when they purchase ConsensusDOCS® from the ConsensusDOCS web site, www.consensusdocs.org, if they use the promotional codes: NASBP (Partner code) and 400 (Promo code) at the time of purchase.

Recently, NASBP negotiated a discount on the registration fee for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Construction Conference that will take place December 1-2 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. To learn how to obtain the $100 discount off the registration fee, read the related article in this issue.

NASBP will continue to look for opportunities to bring to the NASBP membership business tools and resources that will help their businesses become more competitive and save costs, and I always welcome and appreciate receiving your suggestions for business tools you would like to see from NASBP.