Thanks for the responses guys. I did ask the engineer his intent for the reinforcement and his response was mentioned in the initial post. The reason I brought up the question was not necessarily directed to a particular project, I just wanted to clarify the rule of thumb among the design...
I'm a draftsman for a structural engineering company and I've worked with a number of engineers in my career.
I thought I understood the basics of slab reinforcement pretty well, but the engineer I'm currently working with (a very seasoned one at that) is telling me something different than what...