I will preface my answer with the statement I have used more than once: If anyone, including any building department plan checker, field inspector, other official, or a contractor, makes any changes or deviations from provided engineered building plans my advice is to obtain a signed statement to the effect they have now become “designer of record”. In effect, they have assumed all liability for the building’s structural design.
With this said, here is where things get dicey. Always pick the battles. Some requests by Building Officials are so minor, it is not worth getting into a fight over. The risk is always in putting forth a challenge, which might raise the ire of the plans checker or inspector. More often than not, a change asked for by the Building Department is a preference item only, which has no code to back it up.
If he wasn’t a building official, it wouldn’t really matter much whether he gets rankled or not. If he was a supplier or subcontractor, fine, take the risk; if he can’t handle it, hire a new one. But you can’t hire new building officials. Get on the wrong side with one and run the risk of installing yourself on the person’s or jurisdiction’s blacklist. Navigating the regulatory quagmire is hard enough without painting a sign on your forehead which says “I am a jerk.”
Trust me on this one – getting into the jerk line at the Building Department is tantamount to waterboarding. Life…will….become….miserable.
I have heard of projects where during construction the engineer of record got calls from the contractor asking for interpretations to the cryptic red marks all over the structural plans. This is alarming because engineers do not release construction plans with red marks on them. If corrections are to be made, engineers make them in the office and reissue the plans. What has happened is an overzealous plans examiner took it upon himself to change the engineered plans via red marks and then issue the plans for construction without bothering to ask or tell the engineer!
In changing the engineer’s design, the Building Department superseded the actual registered engineer as the engineer of record and assumed all sorts of liability. If their risk manager ever got wind of this, heads would roll. And roll they should.
Oftentimes, engineers do nothing about this, especially if it is near an Act of Congress to obtain a building permit in the particular jurisdiction. Sadly sometimes the only way to obtain a permit is via the building department redoing the design and assuming the liability. Raising a stink could cause long delays in the issuance of a permit.
Before questioning the Building Official, weigh the costs. If the building inspector is a reasonable person, ask the question. If, on the other hand, the inspector is seemingly “out to get you”, maybe let the issue pass and then at the end of the project bring it up to his superior.
If you are a Building Official and reading this, please do give me feedback on “smoothing the road”. Trust me; I am on your side. My goal is always the same: To provide adequate support and education to clients to assist them in getting a well-designed pole building which is safe, sound…and built to code.
I’m a Chief Building Official of a medium sized city here in Colorado. I would very much disagree with the sentence “More often than not, a change asked for by the Building Department is a preference item only, which has no code to back it up.” We as code officials are simply ensuring work meets a bare minimum standard, a D- if you will. We always cite code references when we provide review comments/ redlines and we are always open to being proven wrong. If your plan reviewer/ Inspector/ Building official makes a call you don’t like, then please take the time to reach out and explain (politely) to them why you believe your design complies with the code. Simply saying you don’t agree with code, or don’t like it won’t get you anywhere, but if you can make a compelling case with code references to back it up, then you have an excellent chance at getting it approved. It’s in our best interest and yours to get plans and inspections approved as quickly as possible, at the end of the day we are all on the same team with a shared responsibility to build safe, code compliant and cost-effective structures.
Rob ~ Thank you very much for your thoughtful response, however I can assure you your approach does not match what our clients find on a daily basis. While many concerns do come with code references to back them up, we find a great number are just the prerogative of the reviewer / inspector or Building official. We got to great lengths with our plans – including having every one sealed by a registered professional engineer and including verifying calculations, yet we still hear the, “in these parts, this is how they always do it, or we will approve it if only…..”. We do not sweat the small stuff and as long as those wishes are not going to create undue work or expense for our clients, we don;t rock the boat, we just comply. Your jurisdiction sounds like one we probably enjoy working with greatly.