Drawing Re-use

[TimmyH76]

Hi all,
We are looking at engineering some townhomes on the gulfcoast. There are only about 4 different configurations of buildings that are going up, BUT heres the question....There are 177 of them. How do you handle the re-use fees? There is a substantial amount of liability when there are that many going up, though the work involved in producing the documents in reletivly small. Thanks for your input.

 

[DarthSoilsGuy]

we don't issue re-usable or generic plans. we issue a set for each individual structure even if the only changes are the elev's to match-up with civil plans. economy of scale comes up and has always been negotiated, but we've come out with the money to cover our idea of the professional liability portion. our contracts have ended up somewhere around 6 issued copy building prints equalling the price of 1 newly worked design.

 

[JAE]

Check out this thread:

thread507-2505

 

[csd72]

TimmyH76,

This is a very good question that many engineers are very bad at dealing with.

At a conference once, the speaker talked about an engineer who designed a simple span footbridge to be used throughout the country and got the calculation wrong! They only charged a couple of hours for it too.

I would imagine that there legally has to be a geotechnical report for each house which should be reviewed by the structural engineer. Footings may need to be redesigned.

The drawings will need to have the address changed on each drawing also.

They will generally want these buildings economised more than a single building e.g. joists taken out to their maximum spans. You will find that designing a building to be used ten times takes more time than a single building.

csd

 

[DonPhillips]

Not to mention your liability is increasing with increasing buildings.

Don Phillips

http://worthingtonengineering.com

 

[jaypartain]

Another thing to consider is changes during construction. If you issue the buildings as you go, any problems that come up in the field can be addressed and altered/corrected if needed.

 

[TimmyH76]

I know the architet will have a fit, but I think it's reasonable to charge a usual design fee for the first building and then 25 to 33% of the fee for each reuse. How do others hangle this?

 

[DonPhillips]

That would be reasonable. The overhead costs are probably the same per building and you do have a reduced labor expense. Not sure the percentages, but even 50% would seem reasonable.

Don Phillips

http://worthingtonengineering.com

 

[H57]

In the past we have used pricing as follows:

For the first - 100%
For the second - 50%
For all others - 25%

This is only for a project with minor modifications from one to the next. When we start making major modifications we would renegotiate.