This happened a few years ago in Louisville, KY.
My company had the contract for a building at the University of Louisville. Min conduit size was ¾”. Slab roughed on Friday, top layer of re-bar too high. Engineer said remove ¾” and change to ½” in slabs. He said we’ll work out the change order later. We removed the ¾” and installed ½” on a Saturday to ready for pour on Monday.
Several months later I was in the engineer’s office to finalize several items and changes. When I brought up the conduit change he said “You got anything in writing?” and refused to OK the change.
A couple of years later, we had another project where the same engineer was involved. This was a retrofit of central HVAC units to several connected buildings. The specs had each of the 8 buildings as alternates. All service originated in building 1, rose to the roof, and was distributed from there. The plans for the alternates clearly stated “…all work on these plans for building (X) shall be alternate (X). Building 3, 4, and 5, were not accepted but 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8 were accepted. We ran the feeders for buildings 6, 7, and 8 to the edge of building 2 and terminated. We went to building 6 and completed the feeders for 6, 7, and 8. The big gap of buildings 3, 4, and 5 had no feeders. (Feeders were 500MCM in GRS).
In a meeting the engineer admitted his goof and said go ahead, I’ll issue a change order. Not to be burned twice, I declined and said I would put together a price and wait for a change order.
To shorten this a bit, I got triple what I would normally have received and later I told the jerk, “Remember the U of L project? Well, I just got my money back 10 times over.”
Rowdy
