2. Section 20 serves an important purpose in light of the arbitration doctrine of functus officio which is "a general rule in common law arbitration that when arbitrators have executed their awards and declared their decision they are functus officio and have no power to proceed further." Mercury Oil Ref. Co. v. Oil Workers, 187 F.2d 980, 983 (10th Cir. 1951); see also International Bhd. of Elec. Workers, Local Union 1547 v. City of Ketchikan, Alaska, 805 P.2d 340 (Alaska 1991); Chaco Energy Co. v. Thercol Energy Co., 97 N.M. 127, 637 P.2d 558 (1981). Under this doctrine when arbitrators finalize an award and deliver it to the parties, they can no longer act on the matter. See 1 Domke on Commercial Arbitration §§22:01, 32:01 (Gabriel M. Wilner, ed. 1996) [hereinafter Domke]. Indeed because of the functus officio doctrine there is some question whether, in the absence of an authorizing statute, a court can remand an arbitration decision to the arbitrators who initially heard the matter. 1 Domke §35:03.

3. The grounds in Section 20(a) and (d) are essentially the same as those in UAA Section 9, which provides the parties with a limited opportunity to request modification or correction of an arbitration award either (1) when there is an error as described in Section 24(a)(1) for miscalculation or mistakes in descriptions or in Section 24(a)(3) for awards imperfect in form or (2) "for the purpose of clarifying the award." Chaco Energy Co. v. Thercol Energy Co., 97 N.M. 127, 637 P.2d 558 (1981) (finding an amended arbitration award for purposes other than those enumerated in statute is void).

Section 20(a)(2) and (d)(2) include an additional ground for modification or correction that is based on FAA Section 10(a)(4) where an arbitrator's award is either so imperfectly executed or incomplete that it is questionable whether the arbitrators ruled on a submitted issue. See, e.g., Flexible Mfg. Sys. Pty. Ltd. v. Super Prods. Corp., 86 F.3d 96 (7th Cir. 1996); Americas Ins. Co. v. Seagull Compania Naviera, S.A., 774 F.2d 64 (2nd Cir. 1986).

4. The benefit of a provision such as Section 20 is evident in a comparison with the FAA, which has no similar provision. Under the FAA, there is no statutory authority for parties to request arbitrators to correct or modify evident errors. Furthermore the FAA has only a limited exception in FAA Section 10(a)(5) for a court to order a rehearing before the arbitrators when an award is vacated and the time within which the agreement required the award to be issued has not expired. This lack of a statutory basis both for arbitrators to clarify a matter and, in