I'm Giving Away Structural Engineering for Free - Visit Your Wrath Upon Me 23

[KootK]

THE SHORT

I am giving away free, preliminary, residential structural engineering services to my neighbors and am interested in collecting negative opinions about that. Such opinions may not alter my course on this but are valuable to me none the less. I feel that I've thought this through fairly exhaustively but, then, it's things that you think you know front to back that tend to get you into trouble. Specifically:

1) Liability issues.

2) Ethical issues.

3) Doing my part to further foul up an already fouled up marketplace for our ilk.

THE LONG

I) The Motivation

I've always wanted some kid of volunteer "thing". My rational self believes that altruism is really thinly veiled selfishness but, still, I've never been able to shake the impulse. Unfortunately, I've long struggled to find a volunteer thing that I deem satisfactory. Once one's income reaches a certain level, it just make more sense to give money than time. Bill Gates needs to be running the Bill & Not Melinda Foundation, not collecting pop cans or manning the phones at the donation hotline. My situation is a much, much more modest version of that. At the same time, giving money isn't something that satisfies my itch in this arena. I want to do something.

I moved into a new neibgorhood last June that has a real chance of ending up being my forever neighborhood. Yay me. Since closing on the sale, my plan has been to seize this opportunity to offer my neighbors my high value expertise on a pro-bono basis. Things like looking at basement wall cracks, leaning retaining walls, deck guard rails, basement post removals... you know the drill. I was thinking Facebook but, recently, my neighborhood got set up on a social media platform developed just for Neighborhoods. And it's catching on like wildfire. So, a couple of months ago, I set this plan into motion for real.

II) The Deal

If you live in my community, I will do the following free of charge:

a) Come to your place one or more times to discuss your renovation dreams and structural concerns as they relate to your property.

b) Advise you, in general to terms, as to your renovation options and whether or not I feel that your structural concerns have merit.

c) Refer you to a couple of local guys to do any detailed engineering required for permitting, construction, etc.

d) Casually and jovially make it clear that the cost of my free help is my expectation that I'll not be getting sued for the consequences of any of my advice.

e) Let you know that my insurance has an exclusion clause explicitly omitting coverage for any work that I do without remuneration.

What I will not do:

f) Accept any paid assignments.

g) Stamp or sign anything.

h) Prepare detailed, actionable drawings or specifications.

i) Have you sign a waiver of liability. I thought about that but don't really feel that it offers me any meaningful protection beyond [d] above.

III) My Appraisal of the Risk

j) Obviously, there still is some, particularly with stuff like cracked basement wall evaluations where someone might chose to not do something based on my advice.

k) I would say that I'm accepting a calculated risk in this instance. Of course, it's a calculated risk that I'm altogether unable to calculate with any accuracy, so there's that.

l) From a purely business perspective, this is foolish, no question. Although, interestingly, I've been offered tons of paid residential work as a result of this exercise. I turn it all down as promised. The head of the senior's association has actually turned out to be a retired, formerly quite prominent architect which has obvious potential from a networking perspective. That old adage about trying to be useful rather than trying to be ostensibly successful seems to have an oddly quick ROI.

IV) The Results

In a world full of disappointments, this has panned out great so far. I've met a bunch of my neighbors and I'm providing real, charitable value. I've even become a bit of a community celebrity for my being willing / stupid enough to do this. Our neighborhood has a very active senior's association and they've invited me to offer the same services within their cohort (who doesn't like free stuff?). The nature of my neighborhood is that there a lot of older folks here that are what I'd call "house rich". Their properties have octupled in value since 1807 but they are on modest, fixed incomes just the same. This development has taken something that felt good to me to begin with and amped up the feel good factor another 50%. Sometimes I even get milk and cookies, like Santa.

Will I regret my decision if I wind up getting myself sued out of having a livelihood with which to support my own family? You betcha. And that brings us back to the calculated risk part. To an extent, the libertarian streak in me just refuses to be cowed by the realities of my marketplaces litigiousness.

 

[Tomfh]

Doing my part to further foul up an already fouled up marketplace for our ilk.

This is the real concern in my opinion - Charging $0 to get ahead of other engineers.

I’ve seen it happen in photography and it distorts the market.


From a website about clients expecting free photo services

‘It will mean great exposure for you.'

'If you don't want to do it for free, I know other photographers who will.'

'We could just find a stock photo if you're not interested.'

'My cousin has a DSLR and I think I can get him to do it if you don't want to.'

'If all goes well, it could lead to paid opportunities with our company.'




I could see similar trends occur in engineering. So whilst good for your personal brand, I feel it’s not great for the collective profession. Ultimately it cheapens us.

 

[BAretired]

When doctors or lawyers provide pro bono work, they provide a complete service, including carrying out surgery where needed or preparing and signing wills or representing the client in court. They accept professional liability for their work, whether or not they receive compensation.

It may be a good idea to check with your professional association before proceeding too far with your plan of giving away free structural engineering services and refusing to provide sealed documents indicating that engineering services had been provided by you.

I am retired from the practice of engineering and as such, I no longer pay fees to APEGA. If I were to do as you suggest, I would be in violation of the APEGA rules, as I would certainly be practicing engineering. I suspect APEGA might have some concerns about your proposal, particularly if you are advertising the service.

BA

 

[jmec87]

You asked specifically for negative opinions, so that's what I'll give you. This could cause you trouble with APEGA. I see a few avenues that APEGA could pursue:

1. Performing engineering for free could be viewed either as charity (which should be positive) or as devaluing engineering, which might violate Rule 5 of the APEGA code of ethics (is devaluing engineering a failure to enhance the honour, dignity, and reputation of the profession?). This one is probably a stretch and unlikely to be an issue.
2. In addition to liability, you could also face a complaint to APEGA if somebody is not satisfied with your work or is otherwise annoyed. Residential structural engineering seems to be greatly overrepresented in the published APEGA complaints/discipline.
3. Is this activity addressed in your professional practice management plan (PPMP)?
4. Would your advice constitute a profession work product (PWP) requiring authentication? Many reasonable people would think not, but based on APEGA's three part-test (see the link below) and their recent zealotry for requiring authentication/validation of PWPs, I think it is possible (regardless if it's reasonable) that APEGA would judge that it requires authentication.

https://www.apega.ca/docs/default-s...essional-work-products.pdf?sfvrsn=5a1b9b57_14

The APEGA complaint process itself looks very painful, even if you're found not guilty. They have recently published a discipline case with names and a fine where the only proven charge was that a report was not authenticated (stamped).

https://www.apega.ca/docs/default-s...line-decision-17-006-fh.pdf?sfvrsn=411a70b3_2

 

[KootK]

This is the real concern in my opinion - Charging $0 to get ahead of other engineers.

I'll own possibly fouling the market but I will not own the assertion that I'm doing it to get ahead of other engineers. I made it abundantly clear in the OP that:

a) I don't want this as paid work and;
b) I am not accepting this as paid work even when it's offered.

Obviously, if I benefit from some round about, generalized "good will" somewhere along the way, that can't be helped. I've done a lot of typing here today and so accept that you may not have read every single word that I've written so far.

I have no way to know if there's any truth in what follows but I submit it for consideration anyhow, given that I doubt that anyone could prove the reverse:

1) If all projects requiring an engineer's signoff would still get that signoff even if I help with the prelim, is that really reducing the volume of stamped design work available for others?

2) For every owner that doesn't hire a structural engineer to help with the prelim, might I be helping another one (or three) to move forward with a stamping engineer because I helped the owner conclude that their project was viable?

Like I said, I don't know the answer sto these questions. But, then, neither does anybody else with certainty.

 

[KootK]

I've submitted the question to APEGA and will report back with their response.

 

[KootK]

I received the message shown below from a potential "customer" yesterday. Is it so inconceivable I might actually be able to use my powers for the good of our profession by parleying this into 1-3 renovation projects for some other engineers? I'll sure try...

]Hi KootK, I would love to get some advice from you on structural stuff. I have many renovation dreams for my house but no idea if some of them are totally off base from a structural perspective. I would love to have someone knowledgeable inject some sense into my dreams.

thank you!
kerri

 

[dik]

Just be careful... you are, likely, just as liable.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[canwesteng]

It seems more like giving advice to your friends rather than charity, only you're making a lot of friends. So not really eroding the profession be giving away engineering services for nothing to people who could otherwise afford to pay.

Nothing wrong with giving advice to friends, I do it often enough, but the caveat is you should feel you can trust them enough that you know they won't give you headaches down the road.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

My vote is don't do it for free (or cheap) but do it in a way that helps out most.

I guess I'll use an example. I volunteer my time for a local flying club and help them as treasurer, keep member records, help manage the airplanes, etc. I got my flight instructors rating not to make money or work toward the airlines, but rather just for the fun challenge and to help out the flying club. I don't charge any less than the other instructors, but I always go out of my way to try to help people as much as possible. Other instructors have schedule conflicts with a member; I make sure I can fill in. Someone was close to finishing a rating and their instructor left to go to an airline; I'll fill in. Someone is having a tough time learning; I'll spend extra time with them trying to help them out.

This way I'm not screwing up anything for liability, other instructors, or anything really. But I'm making a meaningful difference by putting in extra effort or putting in the effort where others can't/won't.

See if you can find a way to do engineering as usual, but in ways that are beneficial. I admit; this seems like an insurmountable problem because 99% of what a residential person is going to care about is the cost. I have no good suggestion how to provide benefit without reducing your fee but I strongly encourage you to endeavor to find a way to do so.

Ian Riley, PE, SE
Professional Engineer (ME, NH, VT, CT, MA, FL, CO) Structural Engineer (IL, HI)

 

[Enable]

KootK I can empathize a great deal. It can be beyond frustrating in having a deep desire to give back but having no obvious way to do so through your professional abilities.

While the concerns regarding liability, insurance, etc cannot be overlooked, my empathy in this regard allows me to not care about them nearly as much as I otherwise would. Indeed, you must feel the same as you surely would have known about such issues before posting your query.

My criticism would be, if anything, about your proposed plan not effecting your desired purpose. If I may ask the obvious: what do you want to achieve by doing this? What deep personal reward are you looking find? Your motivation is somewhat covered in your OP but it is generic in saying that you want to "give back." But what does "give back" mean? For example, would you enjoy offering free services to a hedge fund portfolio manager making $10 mil + / year? Probably not. So I would suspect your "give back" goes beyond just the activity and lack of payment.

It must then be asked: is your neighborhood the right place to quench your desire? Look into your heart of hearts and ask yourself if the composition of the people you might be helping is of the right sort. For my own money, my neighborhood would not be the place. I would rather be helping people much less well off where my services might make the difference of them owning a home or having to live in a rat infested apartment for the rest of their days. For me, that is who I would need to be helping to make the juice worth the squeeze (re: liability, etc). To be clear, I am not saying that should be the same for you or anyone else for that matter. All I am calling to your attention is that if you do this, make sure it's for the right sort; the sort that will satisfy that personal drive.

It would be a shame to embark on such an enterprise only to find that you were helping people that could mostly afford an engineer to begin with but didnt out of frugality and such a circumstance was neither rewarding for you plus conferred extra liability.

Also, hope APEGA is better than the PEO otherwise I think you'll hear back in 12 - 16 business WEEKS

 

[KootK]

It seems more like giving advice to your friends rather than charity, only you're making a lot of friends.

Sure, in the sense that I consider my entire community to be, effectively, friends of varying degrees that I've not met yet, I'm doing favors for friends.

I have no good suggestion how to provide benefit without reducing your fee but I strongly encourage you to endeavor to find a way to do so.

What to say? I've been noodling on this for a couple of decades now and this is the best that I could come up with. I once designed an SPCA addition for free and, also once, designed a weird Christmas lighting setup for a Ronald McDonald house. In two decades of searching for meaning, that's IT. And that's no where near enough for me. If someone has a better idea, I'm all ears. If not, I've no intention of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

But in the spirit of harnessing the power of negative thinking, what about when you find the nutty people in your community.

I'm grateful for your input kipfoot. In response, I would say that anyone familiar with my work here probably recognizes that I'm not overly concerned with making friends. I like having friends, yes. But, at the same time, I'll not be crying myself to sleep if I have to cut ties with a jerk or ten. My first "client" actually booked me and then cancelled saying "my contractor told me all that I needed to know so I don't need your help any more". As though my creativity and skill might not ever open up possibilities beyond those contemplated by a contractor. That stung a little but I've got a very short memory for failure and disappointment.

 

[KootK]

Indeed, you must feel the same as you surely would have known about such issues before posting your query.

Just so.

what do you want to achieve by doing this?

Primarily, I want to assist folks that share my community with me. Sure, that is undoubtedly because helping and being seen to be helping ultimately feeds my ego and make me feel good. A secondary goal is simply to get to know neighbors that I otherwise might not and to ingratiate myself to those that I'm already on friendly terms with. I'm a social animal. This is sort of me picking gnats out of my neighbor's fur.

What deep personal reward are you looking find?

Service without the expectation of reward I guess although, as mentioned, there will be some soft rewards. Because structural engineering is so commoditized, my experience of my work is that it is largely transactional in nature. Occasionally I feel that I'm legitimately helping my clients but, most of the time, I have the sensation of being a low cost necessary evil. Do other structural engineers feel better about their work? I hope so but I don't know. I know that you have it a bit better on account of the nature of your work and, rest assured, I'm jealous of that. Maybe it's naïve to think that pediatrists and special needs teachers derive more meaning from their work than I do but, from the outside, that's how it looks and feels to me.

For example, would you enjoy offering free services to a hedge fund portfolio manager making $10 mil + / year? Probably not.

I would actually, although not as much as I'd enjoy helping out a senior citizen on a fixed income. Kerri, above, is a single mother of three. I don't know for certain but suspect that she'd not be exploring her renovation dreams just yet if getting started meant a $350 visit from another engineer who may or may not indicate that her goals are achievable. With regard to the hedge fund manager, know that I'm not trying to earn myself sainthood here. I do feel that I'm serving the public good with what I'm doing but I'm not looking to compete with Bono or anything. I just want some little corner of my professional life to not be about huckstering my way through making a buck.

...is your neighborhood the right place to quench your desire? Look into your heart of hearts and ask yourself if the composition of the people you might be helping is of the right sort.

I'm repeating myself a bit here but:

1) Yeah, what I've been doing feels really good to me so far. Does it make me a lousy person that I'm thus far satisfied helping out my equally priviledged cohorts? Maybe. But, again, I'm not gunning for moral high ground here.

2) I'm not going out of my way to maximize my service to humanity. I'm nowhere near that good of a person. But I'm good enough that doing something feels a lot better to me than doing nothing which is what I've been up to since highschool +/-. As I mentioned, I've done a few sporadic things. There has been, by no means, a focused program of attempting to do good things though.

 

[Enable]

Primarily, I want to assist folks that share my community with me. Sure, that is undoubtedly because helping and being seen to be helping ultimately feeds my ego and make me feel good. A secondary goal is simply to get to know neighbors that I otherwise might not and to ingratiate myself to those that I'm already on friendly terms with. I'm a social animal. This is sort of me picking gnats out of my neighbor's fur.

I would actually, although not as much as I'd enjoy helping out a senior citizen on a fixed income. Kerri, above, is a single mother of three. I don't know for certain but suspect that she'd not be exploring her renovation dreams just yet if getting started meant a $350 visit from another engineer who may or may not indicate that her goals are achievable.

Your motivations are your own. Who is anyone else to judge them? I certainly hope my post didn't come across as doing so. I just wanted to make sure you thought through what you wanted from the arrangement (the juice) given the squeeze could be kind of a bummer (though it may not necessarily be).

It sounds like the neighborhood approach would work well for you then and I see no reason why you shouldn't pursue it. However, despite not being full-stop issues you still must absolutely address two concerns: your professional association's opinion on the ethics of it all (which you've already inquired about), and your insurance. Should things turn sour you still want your insurance company to back you and so, you will want to discuss with your rep what can be done to extend coverage to these pro-bono situations. It might be that it's already covered but likely you will have to pay an additional premium of sorts for the pro-bono work that would equate to an equivalent percentage of fees (assuming the jobs were priced).

I hope it works out well!

I know that you have it a bit better on account of the nature of your work and, rest assured, I'm jealous of that.

I find this more than slightly humorous given that I spend most of my days asking where all the adults are. It seems like in my line of work, at least to me, that people try to repair things to make them worse half the time. What I would give to work with some real designers (honestly would be such a treat)!

Being more construction / contractor oriented has its perks (I have bobcats and excavators and ALL the fancy Hilti tools haha). But largely it's seeing the same mistakes over and over again and it gets tiresome. To get my mental stimulation I've given up looking to my professional work and I actually teach the Law School Admissions Test a couple nights a week through a course I took some years back. I learn a lot from the students and I get much more satisfaction from seeing the LSAT "click" for one of them than I do by designing weldments. Hence my empathy. I get what it means to feel like I'm just doing things to do them without much on the other side (of course not all the time just sometimes it feels like that...I do really enjoy figuring out the complicated repairs).

 

[NorthCivil]

Surely you have worked for homeowners before. Their mess is everyone elses fault but their own. your opinion is rubbish unless it is in line with what they have already visualized.

If you want to combine engineering and charity, volunteer for a post-disaster operation like rebuilding haiti. An even better way to give your time is to mentor a young apprentice, not give free service to financially established (house rich or not) neighbors.

Hell I look at the rents around here and wonder how students pay them. the young up and comers have it hard these days. Take on a summer student for a year, students have a hard time finding work, or find that first job. Thats a much better way to "give back"

 

[KootK]

I can see now that describing this as a "charitable" exercise has caused confusion with regard to my intent. Perhaps "local volunteerism" would be better. The "local" part is important to me in this. I wish to serve what I perceive to be my immediate, physically proximate community. That, regardless of whether my particular community is worthy of such charitable assistance from a global perspective. Like the lady who picks up "other people" dogshit from the park in the spring.

I have done residential work in the past and am familiar with the issues. That said, I deliberately set this up such that I'm not the guy doing the detailed work precisely to avoid those issues. And, thus far, it's been working great. I show up, tell folks how I think their homes work structurally, and chat about some broad strokes strategies for achieving their goals and what potential pitfalls might be. An hour later our date is over, everybody's happy and better informed than they were at the start, maybe I've had some yummy banana bread, and that's the end of it. Clean. Easy. Personal. High value. No dog shit other than that which my own dog generated on the way over.

 

[KootK]

I certainly hope my post didn't come across as doing so.

Not at all. The goal here was to vet what I knew would be a controversial move and everybody's been a great help in that respect. I'm not really one to abide regulations just because there are regulations but, at the same time, I am very much into trying to do my part to keep our profession healthy.

With regard to the health of the profession, I have great concern for the notion that something like this "cheapens" the profession. When I hear that term bandied about, what I read between the lines is this:

"cheapening" = hindering our usual ability to fight over the fee equivalent of table scraps like a bunch of frothing baboons. I often feel that this is a fear based perspective that leads us to believe that a thing that is not invoiced for becomes a thing having no value, ultimately threatening our livelihoods.

I take the opposite view and feel that what I'm proposing actually ennobles the profession. I help out my local community and pass along the paid opportunities to other local engineers. That, precisely because I do not feel compelled to desperately defend my meager little corner of the profit universe tooth and nail.

Also, I'm educating the public, one household at a time, about the kind of creative value that a structural engineer can bring to a project beyond just stamping WL^2/8 beam designs for permitting. My structural engineer wife loves home improvement shows. It annoys me to no end that, in the context of those shows, the structural engineer is always just some poorly dressed, charmless chump who does nothing more than confirm that the property brothers were right in assuming that a beam would be required there. We're better than that.

 

[KootK]

...and your insurance.

That part was surprisingly easy given that I was/am willing to forgo being insured for this stuff. It turns out that insurers are quite happy to excluded any darn thing from their scope if desired and, in some cases, give you a pretty good break on your premiums as a result. If I wished it, it seems that I could not insure contracts signed when the moon is full or when Seahawks play the Packers.

 

[1503-44]

I would hold off on advertisements. Its too easy to connect the dots to "whats he really doing this for", thereby creating a barrier to trust and it suggests there is a business motive. Keep it as informal as possible in as many aspects as possible.

Avoid persons with a list of things to do. They will be happy to simply give you the list and expect you to deal with it. "Listers" have motive, but lack ability to complete. That's why their list is long.




Statements above are the result of works performed solely by my AI providers.
I take no responsibility for any damages or injuries of any kind that may result.

 

[LittleInch]

Interesting set of points for sure.

My input to this would be:

Reconsider your points d and l and instead just say in a sheepish way "I'm very sorry to ask you to do this, but my lawyer / wife / the organisation need you to acknowledge what I'm doing for you"

Then make it as short and simple as you can so that no one can say they didn't understand.

My points would be

1) I am providing some general structural advice and guidance for no fee or consideration.
2) There is no warranty, expressed or implied in anything I say.
3) The homeowner retains all responsibility and liability for any action or inaction.
4) Professional Engineers will need to be involved who I have no financial connection with.
5) Only those aspects which are clearly visible have been used by me to form any advice or guidance.
6) Many defects which could cause issues are hidden and / or require further investigation by others.
7) Other engineers or professional (e.g. architects) may have different views or judgements. I will make no judgement about any other person or company.

Signed xxx

Then make sure you take a bunch of photos ( including one with the homeowner next to you as a selfie) and make some notes that day and save them on file.

Is it as big a risk as some make out above? - No real idea, but I think most courts, if it ever got that far, would take a more reasoned view of what you said to do, or more importantly NOT do and the value that could be placed on it. It's great to do this IMHO and you just need to judge every request individually and be prepared to follow your instinct if you think someone is not being straight with you. Difficult I know, but most of us have been around long enough to know that you should trust your instincts and be prepared to walk away if it doesn't look, smell or taste right.



Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[LittleInch]

I also think as engineers, we tend to forget that the majority of the population (90%+) have no basic clue about structural or engineering issues and are either

A) Scared to death that anything they do will cost them a fortune in either engineering fees or construction costs, when it is actually fairly simple or
B) Have no comprehension that what they want to do could be very costly or cause death and destruction and Old joe the builder doesn't know that either

Hence you get load bearing walls knocked down, trusses butchered, beam sections and strength destroyed, wooden decks in particular built and fall down, cracks appearing or floors bowing etc etc , all because no one with our level of knowledge has taken an hour or so to say

"Yeh that looks Ok and should be reasonable, here's the number of a man / company etc that can help you further" or

"That looks to me like this is going to be a lot of money / really needs to be repaired / replaced and here's the number of a man / company who you need to contact tomorrow to stop your house falling down"

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.