Harold is right, complying with the code is the responsibility of the designer. I think you should have to have some basic NEC (and other code) competence before you get your architect's license. I fear they spend more time on the "arty" part and less on the code part. In a perfect world this would be caught in code review but they really don't delve into that kind of detail when you get to cabinetry. What is on "the plan" is far from a real plan for what they build. Again, I throw this back to the builder or job super to be sure they figure out a way to meet code in the early design phase from the cabinet guy.
You can't really even blame this one on code churn. I think the last major change was in 93 or 96 and it was for counter tops.
