Liability Issues

[dreber]

I am being offered structural job for a solar company at which I would be reviewing and stamping off on 4-6 residential roofs per day.

The volume is so high because a trained site inspector visits the site and a drafter/engineer prepares plan and section views for me based on the inspection before the project ever gets to my desk.

Then both the site inspection report, including lots of photos, as well as the semi-complete plans come to me. I review the photos and the drawings to make sure everything is reasonable, I design minor upgrades as necessary, and stamp.

Here's the rub though. When I stamp, I believe that I incur two types of liability.

First is civil liability in that an aggrieved customer could sew me and my company. I am not really worried about the first type of liability as Errors and Omissions insurance should protect me.

The second type of liability is personal liability to my license because of the possibility of being reported to the board of engineers in my state. Since I typically never go on site and since the volume of stamping would be so high, this seems like a potential problem.

Am I right to be concerned about personal liability? Is it worth worrying about? If so, what is that risk worth? I.E. it seems reasonable that if they paid me enough, working for them would be worth my personal liability. Is this why some engineers won't stamp a project for which they are being paid less than $250?

 

[Ron]

Yes, you are right to be concerned. Do you know the qualifications of the people who will be making the field assessment? What is their training? Will you have supervisory control over them? How much time will be alloted for analysis? What are the downstream implications?(roof leaks, lack of performance, structural damage)

As a licensed engineer, you have a responsibility, first and foremost, to protect the health, safety and welfare of the PUBLIC. Not your employer. Is your direct boss an engineer? Will his decisions try to influence your engineering judgment...or even worse, will he try to dictate your decisions based on financial gain?

Lastly...will the company carry professional liability insurance to protect you and will they indemnify you for your actions?

 

[JAE]

Agree with Ron.

Also would suggest that you visit with your engineering board and discuss the activity ahead of time. Some engineering boards don't like talking through issues like this ahead of time (they prefer only to respond to complaints) but other boards appreciate proactive engineers looking out for the PUBLIC and wrestling with the legal and ethical aspects of engineering practice.

I couldn't tell directly if the solar company is hiring you as an employee or if they are contracting with you as a separate consultant. Can you clarify?

 

[dreber]

Thanks for your input, Ron. The field assessors would be doing this work quite a bit and I would have supervisory control over them so the quality of their work would become reasonably good over time. That said, I don't know how well trained they are at this point and the likely truth is that they aren't yet as good as they need to be.

I suppose if I were doing 5 jobs in a day, that would be over an hour for each job. Assuming that there would be no upgrades (which would usually be the case) that should be enough time to review the site photos, and run a few beam calculations and wind calculations. Seismic is not a concern as the systems are A) not in high seismic zones or B) less than 10% of the existing dead load.

I think the amount of time is tight, but given the state of the projects when they get to me, it should be enough. 90% of the structures are perfectly fine and if the audit is good, it's really quick to determine as much)

My boss would be an architect who has made his career designing in the solar industry so he has a good handle for what is going on.

Finally they are indeed planning to carry errors and omissions insurance.

 

[dreber]

JAE,

This company is looking at hiring me, which is good from the point of view that I have a better opportunity to train the site inspectors. However, I have done some of this work before as a consultant and would be interested in your thoughts on how things might be different when consulting.

The thing that worries me about this position is the volume. As a consultant, I am lucky to get 5 jobs in a week, whereas at this company I would be doing 5 to 6 times as much stamping.

 

[MikeHalloran]

What happened to the person who used to do all that stamping?


Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[JAE]

dreber,
If you are an employee you would most likely have the advantage of working under a corporate umbrella and, as you posted above, probably covered fine under your companies professional liability insurance. As far as your reference to the second issue of what you call personal liability - which I interpreted from your post as a concern over your local engineering board somehow taking a dim view of the high frequency of your stamping - I'm not sure I can directly perceive what the risk is as long as your work, review, designs, etc. are done with a good high level of standard of care and the risk of problems initiating someone (the homeowners) to complain to the board. I still think that discussing this with your board would be a healthy and helpful thing to do as you'd get direct feedback from the board on their views ahead of time. I think they would probably say the same thing - do a good, thorough job on the designs and protect the public.

As a separate consultant the situation would be similar in terms of professional liability except that it would have to be YOUR professional liability insurance and I would only work under the umbrella of your own LLC or corporation - not as an independent engineer contracting with the solar company. The issues with the risk of the board coming at you via a client complaint would be the same whether you work for the solar company or your own company.

 

[dik]

In some jurisdictions, even your employer can sue you for negligence.

Dik

 

[XR250]

I would never do that without first visiting the site. There may be some structural issues that are not apparent in the photographs.
For example, say the house was framed with the ceiling joists running perpendicular to the rafters (against code and the laws of physics, but common in our area). So the roof may have a spreading issue in the future (or already) and adding the solar collectors may or may not make that worse. Either way, the homeowner is going to blame you if it occurs. The other thing to be aware of with solar panels (that is often overlooked) is that the rack usually only attaches to every third rafter so the point load is only resisted by the 4' O.C. rafters. If the rafters are close to the bottom of the code, then this can potentially be an issue. Adding a distribution member under the rafters usually takes care of it.