Structural engineer

[Aliciakot]

Hi there,

We’ve employed an architect and structural engineer for our development.

We have initially sent both our plans and planning permission when requesting their fee proposal.

At some stage the architect sent the strong plans to the SE when from an old planning permission and the SE carried on working on them instead of the plans we sent them at the begging. Our builder has now followed the foundations plans from the SE and it is the incorrect foundations.

After we have noticed that the plans don’t seem right. The architect is happy to re do their plans tor no extra cost but the SE are claiming they have not made any mistakes as they were given plans from the architect.

I believe the SE is wrong to say that as they have initially received the correct project from us and we employed them and pay them and they’ve never noticed that the architect sent them the wrong plans.

Could someone please help out and help me understand this as now we not only have massive additional costs for redoing the whole foundations, for the builders extra work plus we don’t have the correct plans for the foundations we initially instructed.

Why didn’t the architect send the correct plans? The SE surely works on plans from the architect? So I suspect the architect is at fault for not giving the correct up to date info. The SE would expect to get the correct info from architects.

When you say the SE had correct info from you, was that detailed plans? Or a conversation? Why did you give info that didn’t go through the architect? Have you caused some confusion? A SE won’t work on anything other than detailed plans.

Frankly, you are going to have to read the contract with your Architect and your SE. It should set out responsibilities.

Regarding the remedial work, is nothing reusable? Is the development now in a completely new position? Also, who supervised the foundations? What drawings did the builder get? He must have detailed drawings from the architect surely?

It seems reasonable for the SE to work on the plans sent from the architect, which he would expect to be the final and approved version.
The plans you sent him were initial for pricing.

Whether he should have checked the version number was correct or cross checked with the customer is up for debate. However the architect made the mistake, not the SE.

Your architect is in the wrong here.
The structural engineer has done the work based on original drawings, it's not the structural engineers fault. To have structural engineer do new calculations on the new drawings needs paying for, sadly for you. The builder will also have quoted based on original drawings. So his price might change too.
Your architect has cost you time and money with his mistake, whether he admits it or not.

Architects have professional indemnity insurance... I'd say you should be getting them to claim on that to put everything right