Responsibility of Product Allowable Design values for an Evaluation Report, liability

[WoodDesignCat]

I'm considering working for a company (incorporated) who wishes to an Evaluation Report from IAPMO, a UES report (the same level of accreditation as an ICC-ES report, but a lesser know reporting agency). I would be doing the taking test reports from certified 3rd party labs, using acceptance criteria or ASTM standards to analyzed the test reports to create allowable design values. In some cases I would be doing analytical models from product data to calculated assembly capacities, then verify them by testing, and signing off that my analytical model is accurate. I would stamp the calculations (I'm a licenses PE with structural background), and would submit the test reports, calculations, and allowable capacities to IAPMO for them to check and confirm, if they approve they would be published for use in a product evaluation report and the liability would lie on myself/company.

It sounds like this is industry standard for these evaluation reports, including ICC-ES reports.

I don't know where to start on the liability, insurance side, should I talk to my own attorney in addition to the company's attorney? There are no other engineers at the company, I have experience in this area, but wouldn't have peers for sanity checks, besides IAPMO themselves, should this bother me?

 

[NorthCivil]

I would say, if you are sure of and comfortable what you are signing off on, you should be alright.

Because your outputs are going to be used in many applications, your outputs deserve more checking and scrutiny than what you might calculate once for a single address.

Are you competent to check your own work here? If not, ask your company for an external peer review check before publishing, no shame in that.

Definitely make sure your insurance and liability is sorted out properly.