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Stamped Doesn’t Mean Safe: Lessons from the Hyatt Regency Collapse

Yankee Chronicler said:
True. This came up in the case of the engineer who literally photocopied another engineer's foundation design details for a PEMB. We considered asking for his calculations (being pretty certain there weren't any) but the Town Counsel advised us that if we didn't have someone on staff who was qualified to review the calculations, we would be better off not asking for them.
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Shirley I would ask for everything in 107 and 1603.1 and that might be enough to discourage an unethical designer...
 
YC, we don't live in a perfect world with perfect people. Designers miss things, I miss things, ask nicely, be firm and document works for me.

The collaborative effort to deliver a safe code compliant building is a design, review, resubmit process. Yes it is frustrating that some submittals miss the mark on the first try, and unfortunately some submittals should have not passed of those my be rejected and in the caser of a submit for a adding to a facility we are working with took over 9 mounts wiht 4 resubmittals and a couple of meetings to permit.

Remember the quality of your submittal is directly proportional to my confidence in your ability to deliver a code compliant project.
 
TheCommish said:
YC, we don't live in a perfect world with perfect people. Designers miss things, I miss things, ask nicely, be firm and document works for me.

The collaborative effort to deliver a safe code compliant building is a design, review, resubmit process. Yes it is frustrating that some submittals miss the mark on the first try, and unfortunately some submittals should have not passed of those my be rejected and in the caser of a submit for a adding to a facility we are working with took over 9 mounts wiht 4 resubmittals and a couple of meetings to permit.

Remember the quality of your submittal is directly proportional to my confidence in your ability to deliver a code compliant project.
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The length of your permitting time is the inverse square of the quality of your submittal....And/ or the effort you are willing to put in...
 
steveray said:
The length of your permitting time is the inverse square of the quality of your submittal....And/ or the effort you are willing to put in...
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There seems to be a race to the bottom. If I think my plan check submittal will sit in a queue at the city for a long time, it incentivizes me to turn in an initial "placeholder" set ASAP, with the minimum of items that I think it will take to get accepted into plan check.
 
redeyedfly said:
It really seems like it's the inverse square of the quality of every one else's submittal while mine sit in the queue.
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Which is why I offer "pre-permit or pre-submittal" page flip meetings where I can tell you most of the things you did wrong in about an hour...Before or after you are in the queue...And if they are that good then I will send you on your way with your permit...
 
steveray said:
Which is why I offer "pre-permit or pre-submittal" page flip meetings where I can tell you most of the things you did wrong in about an hour...Before or after you are in the queue...And if they are that good then I will send you on your way with your permit...
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Yup, happy to do that. Problem is that they usually misinterpret things I said and/or only hear what they want to hear. Then when they inevitably still receive pages of comments all I get is, "Well, that's not what you said before." Or "You told me to do it that way." Or "Why didn't you tell me that before?" Or. Or. Or.
 
steveray said:
Which is why I offer "pre-permit or pre-submittal" page flip meetings where I can tell you most of the things you did wrong in about an hour...Before or after you are in the queue...And if they are that good then I will send you on your way with your permit...
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You might be surprised how many cities don't do that. Most will do an initial meeting to answer some questions about quirks in their code or AMM procedures, etc. but don't want to follow up before permit submittal.

It would be awesome to get approval from a 1 hour meeting but our typical submittal is 300-400 sheets, a few months is typical.
 
redeyedfly said:
You might be surprised how many cities don't do that. Most will do an initial meeting to answer some questions about quirks in their code or AMM procedures, etc. but don't want to follow up before permit submittal.

It would be awesome to get approval from a 1 hour meeting but our typical submittal is 300-400 sheets, a few months is typical.
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I don't like to work for free either, but it really can be an "olive branch" to let them know you are trying to help....And help them step up their game....
 
Joe.B said:
Yup, happy to do that. Problem is that they usually misinterpret things I said and/or only hear what they want to hear. Then when they inevitably still receive pages of comments all I get is, "Well, that's not what you said before." Or "You told me to do it that way." Or "Why didn't you tell me that before?" Or. Or. Or.
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So many times, in so many meetings I get a question where the answer is "yes, if you do XYZ". They somehow always stop listening at "yes", and miss the "XYZ".
 
redeyedfly said:
You might be surprised how many cities don't do that. Most will do an initial meeting to answer some questions about quirks in their code or AMM procedures, etc. but don't want to follow up before permit submittal.

It would be awesome to get approval from a 1 hour meeting but our typical submittal is 300-400 sheets, a few months is typical.
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in 20 years i may have had only 3 meetings with a designer. We charge for a meeting. 3rd party inspection companies do nothing for nothing.
 
Yikes said:
There seems to be a race to the bottom. If I think my plan check submittal will sit in a queue at the city for a long time, it incentivizes me to turn in an initial "placeholder" set ASAP, with the minimum of items that I think it will take to get accepted into plan check.
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We get placeholders before site plans were approved by planning/ zoning. There’s usually not enough information on there for a complete review, plenty of comments, and when we get it back it’s redesigned to the point of it being a new first round - except now it’s crunch time baby, building department has to giddy up.
 
steveray said:
Which is why I offer "pre-permit or pre-submittal" page flip meetings where I can tell you most of the things you did wrong in about an hour...Before or after you are in the queue...And if they are that good then I will send you on your way with your permit...
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This is great but I think it’s a waste of the time if it’s too early in the process and if their plans are insufficient/ vague - no? We’re always “behind”/ slammed so what seems to work best is doing a round or two of review and then setting up a meeting if we’re not making progress. Maybe there’s a third better option?
 
steveray said:
I don't like to work for free either, but it really can be an "olive branch" to let them know you are trying to help....And help them step up their game....
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That only works for those who are interested in upping their game. I haven't encountered any of those in recent years. It's all about throwing some lines on a sheet of paper and then complaining to the administration because the plan reviewer (me) found 27 issues that prevented issuing a permit. Yes, I cited code sections for all 27 issues -- obviously, I'm the problem.

As I have commented before, it has gotten to where I'm ashamed to admit that I'm a licensed architect. When I was preparing working drawings (or large projects), we regarded it as a major failing (on our part) if our construction documents were rejected for a permit. Architects today aren't even a little bit embarrassed when their drawings are rejected -- they just pick up the phone and tell the town manager the building department is being obstructionist [again].

Some recent studies I did on how much money from permit fees building departments in my state get to keep versus what they take in illustrates the problem. I found that the average seems to be that departments get back between a half and two-thirds of fees to run the department. The rest goes into the municipal general fund. My own home town was the worst. We give the building department 25% of fee revenue to run the department. BUT ...

In researching the budgets, I also discovered that most municipalities DON'T group the building department under Public Safety. That typically covers the police and the fire department. Building departments were, I found, more likely to be grouped in with Zoning and Land Use, or (even worse) under Economic Development. This demonstrates that public officials simply do not understand what the role of a building department is.
 
redeyedfly said:
I mean, the building permit fees are typically very close to seven figures.
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Yep...so they deserve all the service I can give them...Once they pay me....But I will do some work before that in an effort to make the process smoother/ faster.

I am looking at one tomorrow with the FM and they have a large patio that needs to egress back into the building and neither of the rooms it goes into have 2 MOE and they need them and there is no good place to put them IMO....This is about a $60 million project....And there are other issues that came up in about 45 minutes of looking...
 
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