Generally speaking, the engineer
is responsible for designing a system that can fit in the space provided.
Coordination is the responsibility of the General Contractor (GC).
You don't believe me? Check your contract. There will be about a 15%
allotment for coordination given to the GC. Who is responsible for submitting
coordination drawings to be approved? The GC. It is the engineer who is responsible
to review and approve or reject them.
These tables seem to have been flipped with the introduction of BIM. On
every single BIM job I have worked on, the GC has complained about not being
provided a "fully" coordinated model. Upon investigating
further, the clashes were often minor and insignificant. Things I would expect
to be resolved through the coordination drawing review process. Further
more, these models are much more coordinated then any of the 2D cad projects we
have produced in the last 20+ years. Why were there not the same complaints
then?
I believe this is an excuse for the GC to get more time and to reduce their
cost of coordination. Can or should that 15% fee be moved over to the
engineer? We are doing the work anyway.
Then would we be agreeable to taking on the increase in liability that
comes with coordination? Some would say that we already are when we approve the
coordination drawings.
How should this contractual arrangement be revised? There seems to be an
expectation by the owner and GC that if Revit is used on a project by the
design team, the model must be perfectly coordinated by the design team?
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