Arizona State Board for Engineers not doing their job. 7

[woodman88]

What happen is I attended a meeting where the City was redlining an engineer calculations over an interpretation of the ACI. The two city PE's was asking the Building Official (a non PE) to back them up. I pointed out the Arizona laws (ARS 9-802) required all referenced codes to be adopted by the AHJ and three copies to be made available to the public. Also that the City only did this with the IBC/IRC. So that the interpretation of the ACI must meet the Engineering Rules of applying the ACI as other qualified PE's would and not the Building Official. The city PE's and the Building Official stated that the City sees the ACI as under the Building Official authority to interpret and that was that.

The Building Official did side with the EOR and not the City PE's in this case.

Now I contacted the Arizona Board about this. The one person I seem to only be able to talk to keeps on stating that the Board has no authority over the City. I have mention and e-mailed that it is the City PE's that need to be properly dealt with regarding this. I am now trying to find out who to complain to about the Board.

I was wondering what other PE's on the forum thinks about what I am doing?



Garth Dreger PE - AZ Phoenix area
As EOR's we should take the responsibility to design our structures to support the components we allow in our design per that industry standards.

 

[Ron]

The IBC and corresponding state building codes reference over 400 standards, including ACI 318, ACI 530 and ASCE 7....all of which are voluminous codes in their own right. Most building departments are not going to have budgets sufficient to maintain a library of reference standards; however, they certainly should keep copies of the most commonly referenced and interpreted standards/codes such as 318,530 and ASCE 7. If they are going to interpret such standards/codes, it should be required that they have qualified staff to do so.

I firmly agree that engineers should not be at the mercy of interpretations by unqualified lay persons. In my state, if an engineer's judgment is overruled by an unqualified lay person, the engineer has an obligation to point out, in writing, that his judgment has been overruled (this commonly happens with City/County Commissions who make decisions contrary to an engineer's recommendations). I see no difference here.

Arizona has a similar provision:

AR 4-30-301, subparagraph 11:

11. If a registrant’s professional judgment is overruled or not adhered to under circumstances where a serious threat to the public health, safety, or welfare may result, the registrant shall immediately notify the responsible party [highlight #FCE94F]appropriate building official[/highlight], or agency, and the Board of the specific nature of the public threat.

Since the building official is, essentially, the offending party here, I would think the same applies; however, Arizona's statutes leave a lot to be desired in the qualification and authority of a building official. It seems to be left to local ordinance to set at their whim. That's unfortunate for the public and this is where the Arizona Board of Engineers should be screaming for revision, definition and interpretation of plans review processes and the building code.

 

[beej67]

I would suggest the following, to engineers in any field:

1) If your municipal reviewer is demanding you do something with your engineering plan that's not to code, but it doesn't endanger the public in any way, go ahead and do it, just document why you did it. This is because:

2) You're going to have to maintain a friendly relationship with the guy to get approvals on future projects, and

3) If you piss the guy off then he's going to make your life a headache on all future projects in his purview.

..however..

4) If the municipal reviewer is demanding you do something with your engineering plan that's not to code AND is also a danger to the public, then explain to him why you did it the way you did it, in as non-confrontational way as possible. If that doesn't work,

5) ..write him a letter and copy his boss, about why the way he wants to do it is a danger to the public, and why you can't meet both your ethical obligations as an engineer and his demands simultaneously. Mention politely that the letter may be a public record, and if something went wrong with the engineering plan (or other engineering plans submitted by other engineers) that were forced by the municipality to be done in such a way as to endanger the public, and the thing failed, then the media might get a hold of this letter, and that might adversely impact their job. Put them on notice, basically.

6) If that doesn't work, walk away slowly.

The truth is reviewers and government agents sometimes aren't particularly good design engineers, and they sometimes don't follow their own laws, but as long as they're not presenting a danger to the public, it's just flat easier to give them what they want than it is to argue with them, because human nature is to entrench a position during an argument.



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