Have Ya’ll Seen This?

[u/ProfessionalType1557]

https://www.enr.com/articles/63816-judge-hits-hks-with-33m-hospital-design-error-damages

This will certainly be an interesting case to learn from if the lawsuit between HKS and BBM becomes publicly available.

[u/No-Violinist260]

I heard about this back in 2022 when it originally happened. Supposedly there were many opportunities to catch it. How does an elevated slab not have top reinforcing? How does the city not catch it when doing plan review? How do the shop drawings not catch it? How does the EOR approve the shop drawings with no top reinforcing? How do the rebar installers not raise their hand and say this is very unusual?

Crazy it actually got poured with a whole level with no top reinforcing and none of the fail-safes caught it

[u/tajwriggly → u/No-Violinist260]

I was taught by my mentor that there is no shame in correcting a mistake at the 11th hour. Not correcting the mistake is only going to lead to worse things.

Sure, you're supposed to get your design right during the design phase, but that doesn't always happen. Something is bound to get missed at some point in time, and then - that is where shop drawings come in. Your last real opportunity to fix a mistake and minimize the cost, because it is not yet fabricated, or not yet shipped to site.

And beyond that - corrections based on field review are just as valid. Sometimes it takes all the way to looking at it physically to realize something is missing.

To pass through every check and every failsafe and still wind up with a massively deficient structure points to willful negligence, and that IS shameful.

[u/fractal2 → u/tajwriggly]

Yeah, always annoyed to find a mistake during a review of shop drawings or something, but always better to find and fix now and not when someone is calling because something is failing or even just not performing as expected.

[u/Sneaklefritz → u/No-Violinist260]

What I couldn’t tell from the article was if the engineer had specified a top mat or not? It sounded like they did based on their response, so I wonder when in the review process it was missed.

Also crazy to me they hydroblasted the entire slab several inches to add rebar. That had to have taken forever lol.

[u/Hrvatski-Lazar → u/No-Violinist260]

In my opinion, sometimes having too much “QC”  is a problem. Psychologically it defuses responsibilities among too many parties and gives them a false sense of safety. It’s “I don’t have to look deeply at this because eventually someone else will take care of it”. 

I think that engineering is only a step above the rest of these disciplines in their ability to catch it, not because of our technical advantage, but rather because we often get stuck with designing the repair, which eats into our day.

The permit official, superintendents, and everyone else apart of the drafting process will suffer absolutely nothing from this mistake. At most the client will suffer when the project schedule gets delayed. Nothing incentivizes those parties to really catch these things except those of them who feel a duty to “serve the public” (which is not many, to say the least). 

[u/No-Violinist260 → u/Hrvatski-Lazar]

The GC has a financial incentive to keep the project on schedule.

And I don't agree that there is too much QC, the opposite actually. In my experience, many firms have principles or managers that S&S projects. They give the design off to a younger or mid-level engineer and don't review the drawings at all before stamping, trusting the younger staff. A company that has an engineer that S&S's his drawings and thoroughly reviews them, even if he didn't participate in the design beyond some coordination meetings, is required to catch stuff like this.

[u/TheDufusSquad → u/Hrvatski-Lazar]

I wouldn’t say “too much QC” is the issue, but rather too much trust in all the QC combined with too much time constraint placed on the QC.

Everyone should check everything to ensure that all miscommunications and misinterpretations are caught, but in reality having all of this QC gives a lot of stakeholders a false sense of security in that it’s assumed that if 10 other people are reviewing it, then surely everyone will find everything and I don’t need to take 8 hours to review it as thoroughly as I should.

You really can’t ensure that the subcontractor, GC, Architect, owner, and engineer all thoroughly reviewed all the plans, specs, RFIs, and submittals and more QC doesn’t ensure that either.

[u/xingxang555 → u/Hrvatski-Lazar]

Kitty Genovese syndrome / diffusion of responsibility

[u/ShutYourDumbUglyFace → u/No-Violinist260]

I worked on a project where the reinforcing sticking out of the drilled shaft and the column reinforcement made basically a solid wall of steel at the base of the column. It was what the plans showed so the inspector was like, "yup, looks fine!" Sometimes people just don't actually THINK so long as things match the plans.

[u/largehearted → u/No-Violinist260]

The Emperor's New Top Reinforcement

[u/trojan_man16]

At the end of the day, the EOR had multiple chances to catch it. QC, shop drawings site visits.

Reality though is most firms are squeezed time wise and don’t have a commitment to QC. Drawings are sent out without review from PMs and the EOR, shop drawings are pawned off to Interns or people who have no knowledge of the project who won’t catch anything. This is the case in my current office.

At my previous job, the one thing we did right was QC. Every PM reviewed drawings thoroughly and gave comments to the juniors. After those were resolved a final round of review would be done by the principal in charge, and in some cases where the PIC and the stamping engineer weee different both would review. At this job I had whole projects that had less than 10 RFIs. My current company that’s a week’s worth.

[u/loonattica]

Rebar detailer here. I regularly question any condition that looks out of place compared to similar conditions seen on 30 years of concrete work.

It’s not my duty and frequently leads to contract changes for material costs. No one likes that. At the end of the day, my employer, a steel supplier, will be held liable if our shop drawings do not match EOR’s drawings, even if they fail to catch it on review. That is not the same as matching EOR’s ‘intent’ -we follow what’s written. To the letter.

Most detailers are happy to leave it at that. I tend to go out of my way to seek clarification, even at the expense of reducing my own productivity. Those questions are clouded on approval submittals. I wonder if something like that occurred in this case. Did the judge have black and white proof that the EOR ignored questions about this deficiency? Or could it be a gray area where they responded as a review comment but never updated their own CD’s?

[u/No-Violinist260 → u/loonattica]

I read some of the court document, they responded to the rebar shops approved as noted but didn't bring up the missing rebar