Page 31 - Forensic Structural Engineering Handbook

1.12 DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION PRACTICES

Construction administration
Results of construction material tests
Written report of each site visit, distributed to interested parties
Log of all field office memos (FOM)
A log of all contractor’s requests for information (RFI), when received, when and
how responded
Minutes of meetings
A record of authorized change orders (CO) and bulletins

LIABILITY

How long should project records be kept? The National Society of Professional Engineers
7
(NSPE) publication #1918-F, revised April 2008 explains the differences between statute
of limitation and statute of repose as follows: “Statutes of limitation bar actions against
design professionals after a certain period of time following the date of injury or discovery
of the deficiency.” Since the discovery of an injury or a deficiency could occur at any time,
the exposure to a claim could theoretically run indefinitely. “Statutes of repose bar actions
against design professionals after a certain period of time following the completion of services
or the substantial completion of construction.” This does not absolve the design professionals
of any liability, but merely absolves them from having to defend their work against an action
initiated beyond a certain number of years after the project has been completed.
Since the statutes of limitation commence on the date of discovery of the deficiency or
injury, which could occur at any time after the project’s completion, the design profes-
sional’s exposure to claim is indefinite. Consequently, the statues of repose is beneficial to
the design professional since it has a time limit to exposure to claims, which runs from the
date of the project’s completion or substantial completion.
It obviously follows from the foregoing that the statutes of repose are more favorable to
designers than the statutes of limitations.
All states do recognize and carry statutes of repose; on the other hand statues of limita-
tions are different in the states and should be researched accordingly.
Recently, design professionals have been victims of unjustified and baseless law suites.
Many states require a “certificate of merit” by the plaintiff’s design professional to review
the facts of the claim prior to proceeding to legal actions.

VALUE ANALYSIS

In the early 1980s a term known as value engineering became a part of the construction indus-
try vocabulary, probably and partly because “construction managers” needed outside opinions
and consultation from building design professionals to optimize project costs and schedules.
During the latter part of 1980 (the stock market “drop”) large general business corpora-
tions started to use the term “reengineering” for the corporate system, which has basically
similar goals as value engineering—to decrease costs for the same work and do it in less time.
However, there came a time when insurance carriers and attorneys realized that value engi-
neering pertains not only to engineering but also to architecture and construction. Therefore,
the designation of the term “value engineer (VE)” was changed to “value analysis (VA)”
wherein the person or firm must be experienced in their respective discipline to serve as a non-
adversarial participant in the value analysis review process.