Contractor will not provide rebar shop drawings? 11

[Ben29]

I did a fairly simple project. It is a 1,500SF,1-story addition to an existing building. The foundation consists of strip footings and slab on grade with WWF. Our general notes require that rebar shop drawings are provided. Our General Notes read: "if shop drawings are not provided then our firm is not responsible for the structural certification and design of the project."

The architect told me that the contractor does not plan to provide rebar shop drawings. The architect asked me, "Are you OK with that?"

How do you answer this question?

They do plan to have a 3rd party inspector inspect the rebar placement.

 

[EireChch]

Tell them you need to do a pre pour inpsection for a day and charge them for it.

 

[271828]

Can your firm be "not responsible for the structural certification and design of the project"?

If there's a lawsuit that is in any way related to the rebar, I'm pretty sure the GC's and owner's lawyers would try to get around that and come after your firm.

 

[XR250]

Is the rebar that complex for a 1,500 sq. ft. addition that the building inspector can't verify it on-site?
Probably the reason he ain't providing drawings.

 

[Brad805]

I agree with XR.

Do most in the US check dimensions or verify for general conformance only when checking rebar shops? The rebar shop reviews I see are not of great value in my opinion.

 

[DaveAtkins]

On a very simple project, the contractor may purchase rebar in 30' lengths and cut it on site. Hence, no shop drawings.

But to answer your question, if you are not paid to do a site visit and do not receive shop drawings, how can you certify the project was built according to plans? Can the contractor at least take photos for you to review before the concrete is poured?

DaveAtkins

 

[BridgeSmith]

I don't think you can get off the hook for the structural sufficiency. However, inspection of the bar placement and certs for the rebar verifying the strength should be adequate to ensure the structural capacity is met.

 

[Heaviside1925]

OP,
This point has been made but I will ask, are you comfortable with "the structural certification and design of the project" without review of the rebar drawings? With the sign-off of a 3rd party inspector? With pictures taken of the rebar prior to concrete placement?
If the answer to these is no, I would let the architect know that the rebar drawing review is to keep from you billing for an additional site visit and see what their response is.
I was involved with a project (heavy industrial, so not really apples to apples) where the foundation sub had sub'd out the rebar fabrication. Because of the drawing review, it was discovered the rebar fabricator had misread the drawings and had the rebar in interference with the anchor bolts. Unfortunately, the rebar had already been fabricated, so the sub had to eat the cost for new rebar, but I say this only because in this situation, there was great value in review the rebar shop drawings.

 

[Brad805]

Heaviside1925, the rebar shop reviews I see would not detect a clash as described. One of our guys is doing field reviews on behalf of the EOR for a project. This project is $600mil or so and there are multiple floors of slabs. There are full rebar shops, and IFC dwgs on site. The level of EOR review of the rebar shop dwgs is size and quantity. To do clash detection would take endless amounts of time, and nobody wants to pay us to review 100's and 100's of sheets of drawings to that level let alone coordinate them with another set of trade dwgs.

I did not think you might not do field reviews. If a project requires a permit in my area of Canada, the EOR must complete field reviews to get an occupancy permit.

 

[JAE]

We never certify anything.

Our signature and seal on our plans only certifies that we did the design. It doesn't imply a warranty or certification that the plans are 100% correct.
Read any US state engineering act to see.

 

[XR250]

Yea, I thought that waa a strange note to have on a drawing. Seems a bit weasel-ly and, at the same time, probably not something their insurance company wants to see.

 

[hawkaz]

JAE, I was just typing the same thing.

Everyone else- please be careful about the word Certify. It is a word that is casually mentioned- but has significant implications.
As engineers, we should not be certifying construction

 

[DaveAtkins]

I was prepared to argue with JAE based on what we do here in Wisconsin, but...

We sign a "Compliance Statement" when construction is complete. We do not certify.

DaveAtkins

 

[Heaviside1925]

Brad805 Fully agree with your points and yes, we do field reviews. This may have been a one-off case, and I was not speaking as general rule, just a case I was involved with that the rebar drawing review saved a lot of headaches down the road. There are a lot more details and nuances I left out to not too be windy, but I thought I'd throw it out in case OP found any relevance in it. Just to clarify a point, the review did not detect the interference, the review detected that the rebar fab shop did not read (geometry and orientation) the drawings correctly. The result, if installed would have been an interference. The EOR (SE) was going to be on vacation and asked me to review them when they came through. It was my one little gold star playing in your sandbox for a day. Maybe completely irrelevant and if so, please ignore.

 

[lexpatrie]

I haven't read all the replies, and this isn't the world's largest project.

However,

Your dyamite, here, should you chose to do it, is to inform the local building department that you have not received rebar shop drawings, have not reviewed them, and are hereby withdrawing from the project. You can copy the contractor and the architect. Close it out and send a "cancellation fee" to whoever you have a contract with. This should result in a red tag and a ground stop on the project whereby the contractor can produce the shop drawings while the project is at a full, dead, halt. This is the nuclear option, but if you believe health, welfare, and life-safety are at risk as the concrete rebar placement hinges on it being done correctly, well, what choice do you have.

 

[fel3]

"if shop drawings are not provided then our firm is not responsible for the structural certification and design of the project."

This is a BAD note because it gives the contractor tacit permission to NOT provide shop drawings, even if doing so ignores the consequences down the road.

A better approach would be to require rebar shop drawings, period. You could add weight to this requirement by stating that rebar shop drawings and review of same by the EOR are required as part of submitting the EOR's Compliance Statement (or whatever you must provide) to the Building Department and ultimately for occupancy.

============
"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill

 

[XR250]

Your dyamite, here, should you chose to do it, is to inform the local building department that you have not received rebar shop drawings, have not reviewed them, and are hereby withdrawing from the project. You can copy the contractor and the architect. Close it out and send a "cancellation fee" to whoever you have a contract with. This should result in a red tag and a ground stop on the project whereby the contractor can produce the shop drawings while the project is at a full, dead, halt. This is the nuclear option, but if you believe health, welfare, and life-safety are at risk as the concrete rebar placement hinges on it being done correctly, well, what choice do you have.

Seems a bit extreme for what appears to be a simple project.
Does not seem like a great business practice if you want further work in the community.
"Yeah, XYZ Engineering f'ed up my job because they wanted rebar shops for (2)#4 w/ 18" laps. What a bunch of idiots"

 

[Greenalleycat]

Man, you guys do stuff weirdly!
We would never do rebar shop drawings - the closest we would ever come is reviewing drawings for precast concrete panels
But never for random rebar
We would always do a site inspection to check the reinforcement prior to pouring though
This is far far far more important than looking at some drawings anyway - anyone who has ever set foot on a building site knows that it's irrelevant what the drawings say, the important is thing is what they have built (and figuring out how many details they got wrong/basic non compliances they've done...)

 

[dold]

anyone who has ever set foot on a building site knows that it's irrelevant what the drawings say, the important is thing is what they have built

The reason we do it is so that if the rebar shop gets something wrong and ships out a ton of incorrectly bent, or incorrect size, whatever, steel then there are not huge delays while they tear all the bar out and have to re-fabricate, ship, and install everything again.

Rodbusters definitely look at the drawings, how else would they know what to build? And they're looking at the shop drawings generally and probably not the structural drawings. Whether it actually gets installed correctly is a different thing.

You review structural steel shop drawings though right? I don't really see much of a difference...

 

[Greenalleycat]

I personally hate reviewing structural shop drawings (and precast), but yes, we do sometimes do that
Typically on larger jobs

The reason I don't like it is I think you take far more liability as a consultant (no matter what wording you use in your stamp) and it allows the shop drawers to turn their brains off
I have had drawing reviews where I have rejected 60%+ of the set - that isn't valuable review to prevent mistakes, it's just laziness by the contractor

Our office also ended up having to settle on a precast panel where the precaster had shown cast-in inserts on the wrong side, so they ended up being built on the outside of the building
Our fault? Not even remotely. Had to pay $30k because we'd looked at the shop drawings? Yep