Rowdy,
I was a Forman for a small company and now for a large company, and there is no doubt that large companies are treated differently by many inspectors. This is not to slam the inspectors, most times this is exactly what you describe, we are exposed to the work we do more than the inspectors are.
Some of the leeway is granted by our reputation, other times you can see it in the way they are looking that they are not going to ask questions because they think we "know" the code better than them. Most times we are just following a print in the belief that the engineer must "know" the code better than we do, not to say I will not send an RFI but you can not question every detail on the print and get the job done.
Doug,
The drop in inspections are the best thing you can do in my opinion. As for not calling in enough, each inspector has different ideas of how often is enough. Some guys will say I'll be here every week or call me for everything, another guy comes a couple times and gets a "feel" for what we are doing and the rest of the rough inspections are by phone, it can be tough to remembers everybody's style.
One positive note is that for the larger jobs owner reps, the different architects and engineers are all regular visitors with cameras so we are watched over more in some ways that the inspector can not.
The inspector can only enforce the code and with the exception of 110.12 does not have tools to enforce quality, but engineers armed with specs can make sure the quality issues are enforced, this kind of over sight for dwelling units does not exist that I know of.
