E57,
I am guess I am a little confused as to why your local inspector is inspecting design issues instead of code issue. If you have a sealed set of drawings approved by the local city review process then how can they expect you as the electrician to build it any differently? To some extent wouldn’t you be exposing yourself to redesign a job and to build it other than it was designed? Sure you might re-route some feeders or balance the panel better but not change fixture and equipment types or rework the load calcs. We are talking about sealed drawings here, and you are not the engineer.
Yes I know there is a note on most plans where the engineer says something to the effect that no matter what they put on the plans, you must build it to code. This however does not get the designer off the hook for a faulty design, no matter how hard they pretend it does. You are licensed to build the project to NEC and local building codes, the engineer is licensed to design the project to NEC and local Design Criteria; there is a difference.
I cant stress this strongly enough: For contracting to work as a business model, you must have in writing a clearly defined scope that you go into proposal with and later becomes part of your contract. Any design changes that are not part of your scope are considered a change in scope and are subject to a price increase.
Just my 2 cents but 50% of project management is good spin, and the better it is the less you sound like the bad guy to the owner and GC.
Last edited by ITO; 07/23/07 10:37 AM. Reason: typos
