My firm have prepared an engineered design of a specialty portion of a commercial property development. Let’s call our work the subpermit and the large scope the overall permit. The design, subpermit, has been “verbally” approved by the permitting agency; however, due to some other permitting issues with various agencies covering the larger scope of work, the overall permit, the subpermit is pending working out the total issues.
We have presented the owner a proposal to deal with the overall permit; however, she has chosen another firm to submit the other data and work through the overall permit process. The owner has asked me not to have further correspondence with the permitting agency without her “approval” . Well, now the permitting agency is asking a few questions of our original subpermit design and the owner has said the “new” firm will answer these. We disagree with some of the answers that deal with the whole permitted work as well as some of the answers that clarify some portions of our design; however, the answer could be looked at as not changing our design. The answers related to our design differ from the owners originally provided information. If, the subpermited work, is approved our stamped plan will become it own subproject based on our design. My Questions are:
Where do we sit as far as being engineer-in-charge of our designed work? Seems we should inform the owner that revisions or even questions answered by others, without clarification by us, that deal to our plan can invalidate our design.
I know that we are not responsible to unauthorized changed to our design, but how do we deal with answers by others that do not show changes on our plan?
Has anyone dealt with this type of situation?
We have presented the owner a proposal to deal with the overall permit; however, she has chosen another firm to submit the other data and work through the overall permit process. The owner has asked me not to have further correspondence with the permitting agency without her “approval” . Well, now the permitting agency is asking a few questions of our original subpermit design and the owner has said the “new” firm will answer these. We disagree with some of the answers that deal with the whole permitted work as well as some of the answers that clarify some portions of our design; however, the answer could be looked at as not changing our design. The answers related to our design differ from the owners originally provided information. If, the subpermited work, is approved our stamped plan will become it own subproject based on our design. My Questions are:
Where do we sit as far as being engineer-in-charge of our designed work? Seems we should inform the owner that revisions or even questions answered by others, without clarification by us, that deal to our plan can invalidate our design.
I know that we are not responsible to unauthorized changed to our design, but how do we deal with answers by others that do not show changes on our plan?
Has anyone dealt with this type of situation?
