Engineered Designed Foundation for Residential Construction

[jod0001]

Talk with a lawyer to better understand your liability. If you limit your actions to enforcing the code you, as a building official, likely have no liability even if you make a mistake. But if you go beyond what is required by the code and act as a designer you likely will have liability

No, it doesn't. I'm an architect, wearing a building official hat. Been there, done that. Remember the old saying: "Ignorance can be educated. Stupid is forever."

No, it doesn't. I'm an architect, wearing a building official hat. Been there, done that. Remember the old saying: "Ignorance can be educated. Stupid is forever."

No, it doesn't. I'm an architect, wearing a building official hat. Been there, done that. Remember the old saying: "Ignorance can be educated. Stupid is forever."

 

[jod0001]

Talk with a lawyer to better understand your liability. If you limit your actions to enforcing the code you, as a building official, likely have no liability even if you make a mistake. But if you go beyond what is required by the code and act as a designer you likely will have liability

Yeah so in my scenario the question was to enforce an engineered design on a residential foundation plan, part of the foundation was given an engineer design which I did enforce while the other remaining section of the foundation was allowed to be installed per the IRC code which I also enforced. So in this case I would feel I would have exposer if I did not enforce the engineers design in that section of the foundation that called for it. I am not arbitrarily asking builders to go above and beyond of what is required.

 

[jod0001]

How does a building official review the submitted engineering calculations if he had no engineering training? If the answer is that you only look at the engineers stamp then I suggest that you have not done your job.

No, it doesn't.

I'm an architect, wearing a building official hat. Been there, done that. Remember the old saying: "Ignorance can be educated. Stupid is forever."

I am not a plan reviewer but if they start having plan reviewers run their own calculations and kick the plans back to the engineer of record for a discrepancy but the engineer disagree with the plan reviewer and hold firm to their design, then what? Arbitration. I’m not sure about y’all jurisdiction but we have a lot of building going on in mine and residential alone normally has an EWP packet in every submitted plan and if the plan reviewer had to calculate each EWP that is turned in it would take an unreasonable amount of time to issue permits, could you imagine calculating the loads of a commercial building. No, unless something jumps out as odd and the other aspects of the plans conform to code I would trust the knowledge of the engineer of record. It is on them if something designed fails. It is a slippery slope when you start telling engineers they are wrong, then you become the designer and that is not our place.

 

[Mark K]

"I am not a plan reviewer but if they start having plan reviewers run their own calculations and kick the plans back to the engineer of record for a discrepancy but the engineer disagree with the plan reviewer and hold firm to their design, then what? Arbitration. I’m not sure about y’all jurisdiction but we have a lot of building going on in mine and residential alone normally has an EWP packet in every submitted plan and if the plan reviewer had to calculate each EWP that is turned in it would take an unreasonable amount of time to issue permits, could you imagine calculating the loads of a commercial building. No, unless something jumps out as odd and the other aspects of the plans conform to code I would trust the knowledge of the engineer of record. It is on them if something designed fails. It is a slippery slope when you start telling engineers they are wrong, then you become the designer and that is not our place."

My sense is that in the San Francisco Bay Area most plan reviewers are engineers. In some jurisdictions the jurisdiction may engage an outside plan checker if they do not have the inhouse capability.

The plan reviewer, except in very very rare circumstances, does not perform their own calculations but they can obtain insights by looking at the engineers calculations. If there is a question plan checkers request clarification from the engineer. The permit is not issued until the plan checkers concerns are addressed.

Your fears are not consistent with my experience. It is the designer that spends the additional time to resolve concerns.

As long as the plan checker focuses on code he does not become the designer, even if he says the engineer is wrong.

 

[Yankee Chronicler]

Yeah so in my scenario the question was to enforce an engineered design on a residential foundation plan, part of the foundation was given an engineer design which I did enforce while the other remaining section of the foundation was allowed to be installed per the IRC code which I also enforced. So in this case I would feel I would have exposer if I did not enforce the engineers design in that section of the foundation that called for it. I am not arbitrarily asking builders to go above and beyond of what is required.

You did correctly. Your supervisor was in error.

HOWEVER -- the way you described it in your opening post, it sounded like the engineer designed one side of the foundation and then just added a note to do the other three sides "per code." That, IMHO, is NOT appropriate. The foundation plan should show all four (or six, or eight, or however many) sides and should show exactly how all sides are to be built. If the details for all the other sides don't show anything more than the prescriptive design from the IRC, that's fine -- but the drawings should show how each wall is to be constructed. Notes such as "per code" are never acceptable, and have never been acceptable.

The contractor in the field may know more than any of us about the code, but there should not be any reason for a contractor to open a code book on the site. There's a reason why those pieces of paper are called "construction documents." It's the designer's job to follow the code. It's the contractor's job to build what's shown on the drawings.

 

[jod0001]

You did correctly. Your supervisor was in error.

HOWEVER -- the way you described it in your opening post, it sounded like the engineer designed one side of the foundation and then just added a note to do the other three sides "per code." That, IMHO, is NOT appropriate. The foundation plan should show all four (or six, or eight, or however many) sides and should show exactly how all sides are to be built. If the details for all the other sides don't show anything more than the prescriptive design from the IRC, that's fine -- but the drawings should show how each wall is to be constructed. Notes such as "per code" are never acceptable, and have never been acceptable.

The contractor in the field may know more than any of us about the code, but there should not be any reason for a contractor to open a code book on the site. There's a reason why those pieces of paper are called "construction documents." It's the designer's job to follow the code. It's the contractor's job to build what's shown on the drawings.

I agree with you, sorry for not being clear in my original post.

 

[jar546]

My sense is that in the San Francisco Bay Area most plan reviewers are engineers. In some jurisdictions the jurisdiction may engage an outside plan checker if they do not have the inhouse capability.

The plan reviewer, except in very very rare circumstances, does not perform their own calculations but they can obtain insights by looking at the engineers calculations. If there is a question plan checkers request clarification from the engineer. The permit is not issued until the plan checkers concerns are addressed.

Your fears are not consistent with my experience. It is the designer that spends the additional time to resolve concerns.

As long as the plan checker focuses on code he does not become the designer, even if he says the engineer is wrong.

I believe that most plans examiners trust the calculations and design of the engineer. I know that on simple designs, we just verify that the calculations match what is on the plans in a very simple and basic way such as the span of a beam shown on the plans matches the calculation. I've personally had this happen where an LVL was calculated as a shorter span than it actually was on the plans. The engineer was actually happy that we found it and he could redesign.

With respect to engineering more complicated designs far outside prescriptive methods, in my town, I make sure that I have another structural engineer that we contract with to review the structural plans. I feel it is only right that a detailed structural analysis be done by an engineering peer. What I will tell you is that about 80% of the time, our engineer finds discrepancies or needs additional documents for clarification.

This leads me to my next point. I've had engineers sign off on projects without providing any calculations or basis for their design. This is where we ask for calculations for our records. When we get resistance from the engineer or architect, we know that they did not do the calculations. When asked why we need them, I am honest and tell them we need them for our records and we will be having them reviewed by our engineer. This always leads to changes in the design. More than once, we had engineers submit work beyond the design criteria of the IBC for something that required testing, and we called him out on it. We spend more time in Chapter 16 than some might think.