Who Pays For Mistakes On Site?

Recently on a job a plumber subcontracted to the Builder only read the engineer's drawings and did not read the architectural drawings.

Normally this would not be a problem, except that in this case there were decorative sandstone corners and the downpipes covered four of them.

It was quite clear on the architectural drawings, which were drawn at 1:100, that the downpipes were to be located on around the corner beside the sandstone. Unfortunatly, the plumber only read the engineer's smaller 1:200 scale drawings which notionally located large dots at the corners, not even on the walls.

The plumber said he had not followed the architectural, in fact had not even looked at the architectural elevations or plans. This was despite the fact that the engineer's drawings have a prominant note that says "These drawings shall be read in conjunction with the architectural drawings" and the builder had given the plumber all the drawings. So the downpipes ended up on the face of the sandstone corners not beside it. So who pays to move the downpipes off the corners? (estimated by the builder at $400 maximum).

Firstly, the builder had a contract with the client to deliver a product for a price. The product is that described by the full set drawings and the specification. If there was a discrepancy in the set, the builder should have identified it before starting work. In this case there was no obvious discrepancy. It is the builder's reponsibility to co-ordinate the trades on site and this includes the work of stone mason and plumber. It is his responsibility to make sure the client gets what he paid for and this means making the plumber aware that there are sandstone corners that should not be covered by downpipes. But, hindsight is 20/20. If the builder gives a full set of drawings to the plumber, the builder should be able to expect that the subcontracted plumber would read all of them and notify the builder of discrepancies related to the trade. In this case there was no overt descrepancy, and the plumber said they relied on advice that the builder gave then to place priority on the engineer's drawings, which they took to mean they could ignore the architectural. The builder could not know they would do this.

If it had been obvious on the engineer's drawings that the downpipes were off the corner the situation would not have happened. The engineer was given an electronic copy of the architectural drawings, however, downpipes were resolved late in a process that was finished in a rush just before Christmas. The engineer's used their own methods of representation and they relyed on their note to cover any minor adjustments a designer may make. In any case this is standard practice as traditionally the architecturals have the dimensions, and the two sets must be read together. To co-ordinated the drawings the architect viewed them on a computer screen and printed them at A3 which was not to scale. Printing at A3 was due to the fact they were a large set of drawings all at A1. At A3 the pipes were the right number and basically the right locations.

The client had put in his brief that the sandstone corners were to be the "feature" but was not able to read engineering drawings and trusted his builder. The client contributed nothing to the situation. So who pays to move the down pipes pipes off the corners?

In the end the buyer of the building does.

The reason for this is that no matter who pays, the person who does pay passes that cost onto someone in the building industry in their next jobs. This adds to the general cost of buidings.

Every mistake in the building industry is a cost to the end consumer.

The contributary factors to this situation were threefold and reflect the reasons for mistakes in the buidling industry in general.

The first and most imporant was that in all cases the people involved were rushing. Time is money for the plumber and it is possible they relied on a high volume of jobs. The builder saved time by relying on passing over a pile of paper allowing them to rush to the next job.

The second factor was that this building is a "one off". Cars have prototypes to 'iron out bugs'. Buildings, though quite complex, people expect to be right the first time. And they most often are not.

The third factor is the lack of care in the building industry to measure twice and cut once. It seems trades often don't bother to read all the drawings, relying on working with what the previous trade does rather than carefully examining the drawings, or in this case only reading one drawing. It is legendary that the specification is serving a purpose in the site dunny, but at least it's on site! Drawings sometimes arn't, or if they are, they may not be referred to!

In addendum:

Recent innovations in computer technology mean that it may soon be that all parts of a docmentation team are working on one drawing made up of objects. The system relies on layers of information and on the team being able to distingish which consultant did what. It is likley the plumber would have still have to carfully consider the information from a number of layers and to find all the notes that are relevant to their work, and they'd have to have a computer to do it.

In the distant future it could be that trades have 3D goggles on with the design image at real size where they build their object in the 3D space, for perfect precision. They already test the assembly of aircraft engines this way. The skill level to operate such a piece of equipment and the cost may be beyond the trades initially.

But we would not need such a high level of technology if the trades read the drawings.