We received a letter from a building official recently that wanted each stamping engineer for every discipline on a project to sign and have notarized this affidavit. The main body of the letter is below, which is from the same letter that every discipline engineer and architect received.
I didn't sign the way it is written below of course. The first thing that bothers me is that I had to fight with my own company's management (as usual, they often come to me with whatever they think will make the client happy at that very moment and disregard the future or our company and my license) to get the wording to what I thought was acceptable. On this project, we have a few site visits as we normally do and are not the full time special inspectors and couldn't possibly certify everything was installed in accordance with Code. The second thing that bothers me is why are the engineers obligated to sign this affidavit for the building official anyway?
Almost all of the work I do is for the Federal Government and they don't use this. So are local jurisdictions now requiring such letters at the end of all projects as standard practice?
1) The Undersigned hereby certifies that all plans and specifications have been designed in accordance with the 2012 International Building Code, 2012 International Fire Code and the 2012 Life Safety Code.
2) The Undersigned further certifies that the plans conform to the laws as to egress, type of construction, and general arrangement, and the plans conform to the technical codes as to strength, stresses, strains, loads, and stability.
3) The Undersigned agrees to maintain inspection reports by the Engineer as the inspections are performed. The Undersigned further agrees to certify, at the completion of the project, that all means of egress, structural, firestopping and fire rated assemblies have been erected or installed in accordance with the requirements of the applicable technical codes.
I didn't sign the way it is written below of course. The first thing that bothers me is that I had to fight with my own company's management (as usual, they often come to me with whatever they think will make the client happy at that very moment and disregard the future or our company and my license) to get the wording to what I thought was acceptable. On this project, we have a few site visits as we normally do and are not the full time special inspectors and couldn't possibly certify everything was installed in accordance with Code. The second thing that bothers me is why are the engineers obligated to sign this affidavit for the building official anyway?
Almost all of the work I do is for the Federal Government and they don't use this. So are local jurisdictions now requiring such letters at the end of all projects as standard practice?
1) The Undersigned hereby certifies that all plans and specifications have been designed in accordance with the 2012 International Building Code, 2012 International Fire Code and the 2012 Life Safety Code.
2) The Undersigned further certifies that the plans conform to the laws as to egress, type of construction, and general arrangement, and the plans conform to the technical codes as to strength, stresses, strains, loads, and stability.
3) The Undersigned agrees to maintain inspection reports by the Engineer as the inspections are performed. The Undersigned further agrees to certify, at the completion of the project, that all means of egress, structural, firestopping and fire rated assemblies have been erected or installed in accordance with the requirements of the applicable technical codes.
