Power of Plans Checkers 5

[msquared48]

I have a situation I am pondering to resolve. I have not run into this before, and I don't think anyone should. I have called the state board for their undocumented opinion - a compliance issue drifting into the possible unauthorized practice of engineering.

I performed the lateral analysis on four small two story basic plan residences about two months ago. He has been trying to get them approved ever since for resasons other than the engineering. Yesterday my client received a phone call from the chief structural plans checker at this jurisdiction, and the plans checker made the statement to my client that the engineering was extremely overdone. The client understood what I did on the plans and why, but, nevertheless has taken them to another firm to be redone. He claims that it will cost him only $2000.00 to save $30,000 in the construction. At issue is the use of Simpson Strong Tie walls at the garage area, plus the extending of an interior plywood shearwall to the underside of the roof diaphragm, things I normally do not do unless I need to. According to another structural engineer I know, the plans checker in question is not a PE.

That being said, I have the following issues with what happened:
1. I do not believe it is the function of a plans checker to lower the quality of the design. I believe he should only make sure that the basic code minimum has been met.

2. Not being a PE, he was performing engineering by essentially giving an engineering opinion.

3. If he had a problem with my design, why did he not check it out with me first. This is professional courtesy.

My problem comes in that my client does not want me to report this checker as he will probably get in trouble, and my client wants to get his plans approved. I do not want to lose this client, but may already have. Additionally, there may be other issues here, some of which some of you can imagine, but I cannot say here directly, and for good reason. Lastly, this jurisdiction is the primary jurisdiction of the business for my firm.

This situation is very touchy, and I am pondering my best course here. I am inclined to approach the checker directly in private, and confronting him on what he did. But I am not sure this will solve the problem for other people in the future. The other consideration is that as the chief structural plans examiner, he has obviously been promoted. This raises the question of whether or not his superiors agree with what he is doing. The liability of the jurisdiction could be impacted.

Any input?

Mike McCann
McCann Engineering

 

[MintJulep]

The client understood what I did on the plans and why

But did he understand the budget implications?

The plan checker's job is to review plans and either approve them or not, and if not tell the applicant why not. Right?

This is sort of what he seemed to do - although I agree that perhaps he could have been more tactful and courteous.

So, if the checker had said something like: "You're engineer has done some things that are unusual, and would appear to increase the construction costs." Then your client would of come to you either for a why, or with a request for a redesign to reduce costs while maintaining the necessary strength.

It would seem to me that this option is still open to you. Why not approach the client with an offer to change the design, explaining what he could loose with the less costly, and less strong design.

 

[IRstuff]

Seems to me that you're splitting hairs, for apparently personal reasons.

In order to check for code compliance, doesn't he already have to proffer an engineering opinion?

I don't know your context, but you seem to be hellbent on acting on a truckload of hearsay.


TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[JAE]

Expressing an opinion that something seems over-designed is not the practice of engineering.

So I doubt you have a "practicing without a license" claim here.

I would not approach the inspector/city/jurisdiction. You'll get nowhere fast.

I would contact the client and ask for a sit-down meeting to go over the situation. You can express your concerns that the inspector wasn't an engineer and that your design is based on your stated "understood" assumptions, etc. Smooth it over with the client.

The jurisdiction would have no incentive to make you happy.

 

[msquared48]

Thanks all for your input and comments. I appreciate all of them. I will respond individually.

MintJulep:

Well, apparently not I guess, although I tried to expound that possibility. But, as you well know, there is a way clients and engineers work. The client tells the engineer what he wants, and the engineer tries to make that particular scheme work. If the solution is too expensive for the client, then the client comes back to the engineer for another solution. This probably means that the overall plan has to be modified to satisfy the needs of both parties. This may occur more than once. Here, obviously the price was more important than the plan layout. That was not originally communicated to me. BUT, it is not the place of the plan checker to be a value engineering consultant. That is the relationship of the engineer and the client. The plans checker is there to make sure all the aspects of the applicable code(s) are adhered to, not pass judgement on the cost. Remember, the codes are just the minimum standards. There is no written law preventing an engineer from exceeding the code minimum, but there is for not meeting it.

IRstuff:

I am not splitting hairs here. I'm drawing a line.
Personal reasons, maybe I guess, in that it represents lost personal income. But it is my business and professional reputation that are affected here primarily to my client. As to whether the plans checker has to offer an engineering opinion to check for code compliance, if that were the case, all plans checkers would have to be engineers of the appropriate discipline. That does not happen everywhere. Ideally, yes, but not in this case. So, obviously, lest they break the law, they should not offer either an opinion or a judgement that could only be proven or disproven through engineering calculations. I believe that you will find that most State, County and City jurisdictions do not want to accept any responsibility for any engineering design. They do not want the liability of the design process, nor do their insurers. As to the heresay aspect, presently I have no reason to doubt what my client or my professional friends say, but I will check it out further. This is not over.

JAE:

Thanks for your input, I respect your opinion as always. But when I checked it out with the state board compliance officer on the phone today, he thought differently. The difference here is that this plans checker made this call to my client from his work, in the capacity of a plans checker, outside of the normal and customary written structural comment letter. It was a special phone call. If it were a proper thing for him to comment on, he should have done so in writing. Why didn't he? The answer is obvious - because he knew to do so would be exceeding his authority. So was the phone call.

The client is coming over tomorrow and I will try to pick his brain some more and patch things up as you suggest. He is going to give me a copy of the new engineer's calculations to review when those are completed, and I will reserve final judgment until I have studied them. Apparently, many of these structures registered as "Basic Plans" have very few holddowns, if any, and that really bothers me, particularly in two to three story structures in a seismic area that could see seismic event(s) over 7 in the very near future. Time will tell all.



Mike McCann
McCann Engineering

 

[JAE]

Mike,

If the "over-design" is that you have lots of holddowns and the other engineer doesn't, then that is entering a somewhat subjective area.

I've done numerous hotels (3 story wood framed) around the country and in my early projects I used to have holddowns everywhere. In fact, one project I visited during construction had ZERO holddowns installed despite the plans calling for them everywhere - so there is a definite resistance to using these from the construction side of things.

In more recent projects I've used adjoining dead loads to count against the uplift on shearwalls. Roof dead loads, adjacent wall's dead loads, etc. all help to counter the uplift and in many cases elimitate some of them...but not all of course. And you should really only count 60% of the dead load in this usage.

 

[msquared48]

Jae:

It has been my same experience - and I have gone to using dead load to wherever I can, but there is little you can do when there is only wall self-dead load to resist overturning on a shout high wall. In the architectural design lies the problem. All to frequently, there is little to work with. There are other options, but they are expensive. Aah, but there's the rub... You get what you pay for.

Mike McCann
McCann Engineering

 

[civilperson]

You have been "Value Engineered" and the criticism stings. Learn from what your competition did in their revisions and either copy those practices or prepare a engineering analysis showing why they are wrong. Then after all this unpaid analysis, file it and forget about it. Life is too short to be petty, be the better engineer.

 

[Atomic25]

IMHO, this is not a client you want to be working for.

Making anyone in plan review mad would hurt your business more. The most I would do is maybe let the guys in your state Structural Engineering Association know about it and go at them as an organization.

This is a good reason to keep residential clients well informed about anything atypical about the plans as you do the design. They are typically the most fickle, whiniest bunch you'll ever work with.

 

[Dinosaur]

I am curious what "extremely overdone" means. Has the client decided the redesign cost is less costly than building your design?

 

[GregLamberson]

Sounds like informal constructability input. The Construction Industry Institute defines constructability as "the optimum use of construction knowledge and experience in planning, design, procurement, and field operations to achieve overall project objectives."

To be done properly the gentleman would have sat down with you and discussed it, but I have done constructability reviews where the engineering firm was not present, not ideal, but if the clients asks you to do it..... Nor is it illegal or unethical, I just qualify the recommendations.

Again, ideally, the client would have come back to you and asked about the cost saving recommendation - shame on them.

Greg Lamberson, BS, MBA
Consultant - Upstream Energy
Website:

http://www.oil-gas-consulting.com

 

[msquared48]

Dinosaur:

Succinctly put, yes.

Mike McCann
McCann Engineering

 

[Dinosaur]

Well then it sounds like he is going to spend more money to build a less substantial structure and he is going to receive all the value (less than nothing) he paid for the advice he accepted from the plan checker (reviewer?).

 

[GregLamberson]

I'll play devils advocate here, but why can't he capture the change with a change order? Does he have to do a re-design because of a disagreement about wall ties?

Perhpas what he's planning to do (or should do) is to develop a change order for the cost reduction, have you review it, approve it, and then issue it to the contractor to build.

And what is a managment of change process for anyway? I've seen many times the contractor can come up with a more effecient construction method to save some time, money, or both than that called for on the design, and as long as it meets the codes and the clients spec's, he can get a variation for it.

Just because it's designed a certain way, can a better mouse trap not be considered?

Greg Lamberson, BS, MBA
Consultant - Upstream Energy
Website:

http://www.oil-gas-consulting.com

 

[itdepends]

You've said that the client is going to have the design re-engnineered at another firm.

I see this as someone disagreeing with your design (thinking that it's over the top) -the client agreeing with that and deciding to get someone else to redesign it.

Although I am not familiar with your engineering codes I can't see how the plan checker providing an opinion that then results in the design being reworked by a suitably qualified engineer being an issue- other than criticism is difficult to take at times.

 

[GregLamberson]

itdepends

Exactly. I think it has been over blown.

Personally what I would do is go to the client, offer to review a change order (for no cost), approve it (explain to him why you did what you did - it could very well have been the client gave certain expectations that were met and in hindsight reconsidered) and save him $30K (it costs you, what 1-2 hours review work) and you may be able to keep the client.

Greg Lamberson, BS, MBA
Consultant - Upstream Energy
Website:

http://www.oil-gas-consulting.com

 

[RARWOOD]

I think the plan checker far exceeded his authority. His job is to verify that the plans comply with the Building Code. In most cases the Building Code is a minimum standard. Builders who proudly state that they have constructed a house to meet the Building Code requirements, basically are saying that they built the house as cheap as the code would allow.

What I would do is file a complaint with the jurisdiction involved, the State Engineering Board and any other State agencies that deal with the Building Code.

The action of the plan checker, I think raises a number of serious issues. The first would be liability. What happens if another firm modifies the plans reducing the wind bracing and a failure occurs?

If I was the plan checkers supervisor I would have several questions. For example 1. Why did the plan checker place a call to the builder, is the plan checker doing design work on the side? 2. Has the plan checker been steering people towards an engineering firm for personal benifit?

After the plan checker did what he did, my first question would be is the plan checker even qualified to express such an opinion.

 

[BJC]

msquared48
After reading all the above I can only add that you are entitled to a more open and above board treatment. Your design may be overdone, to expensive, and you may never work for that client again, but the way things seem to me that may happen what ever you do. If the plans checker is going to second guess your design and then verbally convey his feelings to selected people you are working in a world of rumor and hearsay. It’s hard enough to work in the real world.
I would go see the plans checker, set down look him the eye and tell him you can accept his behavior if he is honest and open with his comments. They should be in writing and you should be copied. He may not be a PE but you can explain to him the commonly accepted mode of professional behavior. If you get a blank look then do what else you can do (complain to the board, the county and the dog catcher).
I would look at the future. In the next 10 or so years are you going to have the same problem? Every time you send a set of plans to this guy are you going to be wondering “who’s he calling now?”.

 

[IRstuff]

Lots of good, confrontational advice, but getting on the bad side of a small jurisdiction is risky at best. Seems to me that one possible outcome of a confrontation is to a continual rejection of future plans for nitnoids. Once your clients get wind that you're essentially blackballed, it'll be worse that just losing this immediate client.

Bear in mind that there's no guarantee that appealing to higher, local authorities is a good thing. For all you know, those higher authorities might be in league or in support of your nemesis.

Rather than an outright confrontation, a meeting to come to terms should be more in line with being able to work with the jurisdiction in the future. Obviously, you might get to an ethical sticking point, but at least, you'll have clear path forward from that point.


TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[EddyC]

I find it rather peculiar that your customer accepted the word of a plan reviewer to the point that he/she fires you and has your design re-engineered by a competitor. (I think that its a cover story). I would try to get the facts directly from each party involved before proceeding with any action against anyone. I would not recommend that you act adversarily against any jurisdictional authority, unless you have direct knowledge that their actions are endangering someone's life. Hearsay is not sufficient. A customer that would dismiss you so cavalierly is probably worth parting with, in any event.