SteelPE:
I don’t usually carry the water for the local building officials or code officials, but if it doesn’t look like an absolute piece of junk, they might overlook it, if they don’t have the negative inclinations about these systems that I mentioned in my earlier post. It looked about like the typical installation of this type of product, and that’s as far as they took it. They probably don’t test every connection to just short of failure; they probably don’t check the dia. of all the nails in the building, or the thickness of all the plumbing fittings etc., either. I’m more upset with them, that they think they should have my every calculation, design sketch and project note for their files. Two thirds of those people can’t interpret or understand them anyway, and I’m not in the business of giving plan checkers a short course in Structural Engineering and then answering their questions on minutia; but now they are their in the public domain for some hungry attorney to check and see if I dotted my I’s and crossed my tees, never mind the general correctness and completeness of my design. They don’t have a right to my inter-office memos, e-mails and love letters during the duration of that project either. Most of the time (many times) the project problem is the fault of someone other than the EOR, and it shouldn’t be so easy to fault the engineers because he left a calc. step out during his design, despite the fact that the calc. is basically correct. They are damn sure to keep us (P.E.s) responsible, we are the easiest target, they know they can get something out of our insurance. Other designers get off with a ‘please quit doing that kind of work and getting caught doing it.’ This poor product, intentional deception, should fall right back on the builder and the railing installer. If they provide a cheap product or system which doesn’t work, it is their fault, not mine, not your’s, because I happened to walk by the site one day, and I’m a P.E.
