Steel Building without Shop Drawings? 2

[sundale]

I would like some input on the following issue.

I have a two story 190'x43' or so steel building. The roof is framed with bar joists with steel spandrels and columns and the floor is composite steel beams and girders with steel WF and tube columns. The lateral system is a steel OMRF at the roof and cip ordinary reinforced shearwalls from the floor to ground.

Our notes and specifications both call for steel shop drawings. The owner's lowest bid fabricator, who is also the erector, is going to fabricate the pieces without any shop drawings.

I wrote a pretty stern letter to the Owner stating:
1. the drawings represent our professional opinion: a directive not a suggestion
2. it is standard industry practice to do shops for such a structure
3. I may not have time to drop all other projects to deal with field fixes when these pieces are hanging from a crane
4. I do not see how a welder could make the pieces without having a detailed piece drawing in front of him
4. there are many prescribed Special Inspection requirements that need to be met in the shop and the field

Basically, I was overruled by the Owner and received a nasty letter from them with the following adjectives: arrogant, condescending, ridiculous, unwilling, unprofessional, etc... How fun.

The drawings represent the final product and how the contractor gets there is definitely a "means and methods" issue. On the flip side, I have never heard of trying to do such a project without steel shops. Another local fabricator (whose bid was higher) said they would not try such a thing. Every structural engineer I have talked to said that's crazy to do this without shops.

As an example, the fabricator's column erection scheme is to field weld the column to the base plate. I asked him how does one plumb the column as I think the weld shrinkage upon cooling will pull the column out of plumb. He said that's no problem with a 12' level on the column... There is a reason the rest of the world uses shim and grout or double nuts and grout to plumb a column.

The only "stick" I have left is the Chapter 17 Special Inspection stuff. This is law. Writing a response to an Owner's letter like that is most likely a waste of time: their opinion is formulated.

Any opinions and/or sage advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[sundale]

We did get (good) shop drawings from Vulcraft for the bar joists, composite deck, and roof deck. They are a obviously a professional company and do shop drawings as standard procedure.

 

[henri2]

sundale, the last paragraph of Part II, Section D of the "Model Program for Special Inspection" (published by ICC)deals with the RDP's review of shop drawings. You can downlad a free copy of this document from

http://www.ecodes.biz/product.cfm?category_id=15&cat_type=free

If you decide to talk with the building dept folks, in addition to what strategy you may already have in mind, consider giving them a copy. Hopefully they'll back you up.

 

[engphila]

These are all valid and justified points, however I must concede SlideRuleEra's point. We are usually contracted to provide a service to a client. It would appear that you have fufilled your contractual obligation. The owner has apparently decided to let the erector self-perform from the design drawings. This decision comes with risks for the owner and erector but not necessarily the EOR, assumming that the design is code compliant. At the end of the day, we all enjoy seeing our 'baby' come to life via diligent contructors, but ultimately we turn our designs loose to the peoples with whom we contracted with . . . welcome to the new world order . . . and keep your legal councel abreast of all your work!

engphila

 

[BSE05]

I would suggest drafting a letter with your firms concerns that if not followed you will terminate services as the EOR.

Run this letter before sednding by your corp. attorney and professional liability insurer.

This is a true mess and trying to monitor this during construction will be a disaster, you will be contesting almost everything he does. Your firm will be to blame for delays etc. Just image if someone gets hurt during erection. Get out of Dodge...fast!

 

[DaveVikingPE]

SlideRuleEra said:
"The Owner has turned the job into a design-build project..."

Cynical, but true. Why the "gosh-darn heck" are we engineers allowing this kind of thing to happen? Is the customer always right because he pays the bills? Is it worth the harm down to our profession to sell our souls? How many of us work for construction contractors who do this kind of thing? It's "good enough" without shop drawings, right? We don't even need design standards or requirements or calculations because the construction contractor may come up with a better way to do things! Why the hell do we even go to college and study engineering when all you really need to do is bully a project into getting built.

I hope there's a way you can sue the owner to protect your reputation. And I hope there's a way to get the construction contractor out of the business.

 

[zcp]

[wry smile] Since when did shop drawings insure a smooth project and well built building? Maybe you guys are seeing better shop drawings than I am?!? [end wry smile]

I guess the big question is what the steelwork will be inspected to.......I wonder what you would get when you asked for the CWI's inspection report?

ZCP

http://www.phoenix-engineer.com

 

[aiden]

@zcp

yes, there are shop drawings that produces good buildings. i once was responsible for checking 7000 tons of structural steel with the guarantee that any errors in fabrication (resulting from bad shop drawings) will be fully shouldered by our department. the project was completed with only one column returned to the shop (splice error). no repair work was done at site, no modifications either.

There is no argument that good shop drawings do produce good buildings, however in some developing countries, in some projects, the engineers are sometimes also are the constructor (fabrication and erection). I had worked with some projects that were completed with no shop dwgs with no major problems during erection at all, but this only holds true to buildings with fully welded structural joints. The fabrication shop do have engineers doing sketches for fabrication using AWS prequalified joints and dimensional tolerances, etc., working together with QA/QC. For bins, hoppers and other mechanical/HVAC/electrical equipments interconnections (bolt holes, expansion joints, etc), shop drawings are always necessary.

In case of building with bolted connection joints, no shop drawings would mean chaos.

 

[aiden]

AISC 303-05 Section 4.2, 4.4 & 4.5 clearly specifies the need for shop drawings. Unless there are specific provisions contained in the contract documents, AISC CP governs, even in the absence of this provision in the contract (except for metal joists & metal building systems). The role of the engineer/design is also clearly stated.

The case stated in my first post above, (i.e. no shop drawings) were mutually agreed by the client and the engineer/fabricator/erector (but would be unimaginable in developed countries).