Engineering Plan Reviewers

So not much has happened since my last blog so I'll keep this brief.

Wedding this weekend, more business research, work and school.

I want to talk a little about plan reviewers in the engineering industry. In the business I work we are required to have engineering plans approved through different governing agencies. One of the things that has always bother is how the reviewers some times handle questions. Most of the reviewers are engineers although sometimes you wouldn't know it based on there lack of judgement and instinct. They always rely on their agencies rules, black and white, no interpretation. Isn't that what engineering is, figuring different ways to do the same thing. Well try that with at reviewer and I bet you'll get that's not allowed by our rules. That's an ok response, but what if what you are proposing has the same end result, just a different way of getting there. How they have engineering degrees and sometime professional registrations and not be able to understand that.

The other interesting thing about reviewers is when you ask them a questions so that you can better understand what they would allow before you submit. I get this one all the time..."your the engineer you tell me." That's great except that I know if I guess wrong then I will have wasted weeks in review time waiting for the reviewer to tell me what I already tried to ask them prior to submitting the plans. I am not asking them to be an engineer or do my engineering for me I just want to get an understanding that what I will submit would be acceptable. It seems as thought they want to take no responsibility some times.

One more thing...when I make a mistake or error in judgement, we get either back charged or sued. If a reviewer makes a mistake it costs our client more time and money and no one seems to ever have to answer for it. I mean, I hardly ever hear about reviewers getting fired. I have know several plan reviewers that have been employed by the same agency for the entire 11.5 years that I have been in engineering.

This weekend was my wife's (Jodie) birthday. I felt bad that because we had a wedding to attend, we didn't get to really celebrate. I am making that up to her this weekend.

That's it. Told you it would be short.