Affidavit to certify project 10

[haynewp]

We received a letter from a building official recently that wanted each stamping engineer for every discipline on a project to sign and have notarized this affidavit. The main body of the letter is below, which is from the same letter that every discipline engineer and architect received.

I didn't sign the way it is written below of course. The first thing that bothers me is that I had to fight with my own company's management (as usual, they often come to me with whatever they think will make the client happy at that very moment and disregard the future or our company and my license) to get the wording to what I thought was acceptable. On this project, we have a few site visits as we normally do and are not the full time special inspectors and couldn't possibly certify everything was installed in accordance with Code. The second thing that bothers me is why are the engineers obligated to sign this affidavit for the building official anyway?

Almost all of the work I do is for the Federal Government and they don't use this. So are local jurisdictions now requiring such letters at the end of all projects as standard practice?


1) The Undersigned hereby certifies that all plans and specifications have been designed in accordance with the 2012 International Building Code, 2012 International Fire Code and the 2012 Life Safety Code.
2) The Undersigned further certifies that the plans conform to the laws as to egress, type of construction, and general arrangement, and the plans conform to the technical codes as to strength, stresses, strains, loads, and stability.
3) The Undersigned agrees to maintain inspection reports by the Engineer as the inspections are performed. The Undersigned further agrees to certify, at the completion of the project, that all means of egress, structural, firestopping and fire rated assemblies have been erected or installed in accordance with the requirements of the applicable technical codes.

 

[haynewp]

Thanks Ron. Yes, please post back what you hear about any of this.

 

[wannabeSE]

Ron,
The Pinellas County document appears to be used when an Architect and/or Engineer performs inspections in lieu of municipal inspectors. See

http://www.pinellascounty.org/build/forms.htm#forms

ARCHITECT ENGINEER INSPECTION (form) - Procedures for the Architects and Engineers Inspection program to perform building inspections in lieu of BDRS inspectors.

 

[TLHS]

In Canada we have standard letters of assurance that are generally submitted to building departments. They're pretty good. It makes sure someone is actually looking at the whole goddamned thing and is supervising all the various specialty engineers and it's a record that can be easily retained by the jurisdiction, and reasonably counted on by non-technical building offices in smaller places.

In the process, it also forces the owner to sign the first Schedule, acknowledging the requirement of field review, which is nice.

They were written by the code officials, architectural associations and engineer associations, so they tie in with all the standards of practice.

http://www.bccodes.ca/letters-of-assurance.aspx?vid=QPLEGALEZE:bccodes_2012_view

 

[haynewp]

These types of forms seem to be popular in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

http://www.ribcc.ri.gov/documents/forms/128 Project Certification Form.pdf