When asked to pay for construction omissions 4

[Electic]

Is it generally ethical to ask the design engineer to pay for an omission from his design?

I can understand the idea that a customer needs to be made whole if the design left out some cost, that was not planned for; however, this also would seem to open up controversy, including
1) that the engineer is no longer teamed with the project owner. Such liability will cancel transparency to find solutions.
2) would seem to imply incentive based consulting, that would similarly include compensation for the engineer if the design saves money.
3) could make problem solving or trouble shooting projects not worth the risk involved, if the problems were not all identified.
4) such mechanism could be used by an unscrupulous developer to recover project costs.

Can such liability be reduced by proposing work be completed "under the supervision" of a customer?

 

[glass99]

Electic: good point about the non-catastrophic omissions, and developers failure to supply information.

Why do the consultants pay in the end though? Is it really to keep developers happy? If you are suing each other the relationship is pretty much fried already. I would imagine its more a function of minimizing legal fees.

 

[Electic]

glass99,

I agree with your comments about why do consultants pay in the end. I have not seen one of these proceed to a lawsuit, but I have seen several times where an "important" customer intimidates the engineer into paying.

Often times the consultant is trying to make deadlines, trying to balance a mixture of different customers, and the customer benefits unfairly because to stop work to settle matters is more time consuming than to concede to the request.

In each case, it seemed the project was the last project completed between parties, mutual respect having been dispersed.

Only once have I been solicited for this. I objected strongly, and even being asked seemed to poison the relationship in my opinion. But it seemed the customer (a small government agency) had previously made up their minds to insist, and cited a long history of claiming construction costs from other consultants. As I negotiated with this customer, it became obvious that each defense I offered was only motivating them to dig in with deeper zeal, I suspect this was the most excitement their team experienced in a long time. It would be nice if such customers could be publicly noted for this expectation, I would avoid them.

 

[glass99]

Electic: its all about the cost of your lawyer. When something does go wrong it is actually very reasonable to want to talk about it, but you can't and you finish up with a kludge of a settlement because your legal team is costing you $2000/hr. In the case of your small government dispute, had your lawyer been affordable you could have really drilled down into the issue. Given the ornery attitude of your client it would probably still have ended in a stalemate anyway, but you would have at least hopefully chiseled off a few more of the issues in a sensible way.