ethical question - warped trusses and the engineer's role

[SLTA]

Hi folks,

Say that you work for a wood truss manufacturer who sold trusses to a school, and you happened to be at the school site one day for non-professional reasons. Say then that you noticed these trusses had been exposed to rain for some time and had warped (they had not yet been erected and were still bundled together on the ground).

What is your responsibility as an engineer and/or as an employee of the truss manufacturer? Should you notify the school that they should just keep the trusses covered, or should you tell them that the trusses may not be safe to erect? Or another option, like do nothing? There are liability issues involved, too.

cheers.

 

[Ron]

HM...thanks for the clarification. Here in the US, the Engineer has a much greater duty of protection of the health, safety and welfare of the public than does the contractor. Reporting the potential safety issue to the perpetrator and the expecting that he would necessarily correct it or appropriately evaluate it wouldn't necessarily absolve the Engineer of his liability to report to a more responsible public body.

I agree with you that it should take no more than that, but it often does. I've been in essentially the same situation before. In two of those cases, all it took was pointing it out to the right group and it got corrected. In one case, I had to write a letter to the building official to have a stop-work order given to the contractor.

The Engineer who designed the trusses (or his company) should be the one to evaluate such conditions. Many contractors can get an opinion from an Engineer with a little money (an ethics discussion for another day!!). Opinions don't necessarily protect the public. Action and appropriate evaluation usually do.

Ron