You buy new house..........or have new addition built...........and municipal building department issues Certification of Occupancy. You might think...........in fact this engineer will "bet" that you actually believe............almost as you believe in sun rising in east..........that, yes sir, code officials have certified that design of my house..........including structural design and construction of structural elements..........satisfies all requirements of building code. Of great interest is how much you are willing to bet.
Based on long experience of this engineer, all-too-many architects are not qualified to perform structural design for modern houses which tend to have "open" floor plans and extensive wall openings. Major structural design errors..........and omissions.......... occur......all-too-frequently.
Yet........and this is "surprise" part............there is no mandated process for checking structural design in New Jersey by any qualified person............or even by any person. I know, that sounds incredible......unbelievable.....perhaps even outrageous........yet, it is how it is.
Code officials, almost universally, are not engineers..........or architects........and have not been trained otherwise to understand structural engineering. Code officials are not qualified to evaluate structural design of your house or addition. Actually..........New Jersey Uniform Construction Code instructs code officials not to check structural design.
Quality of structural design performed by architects is variable, as for any profession.
One might wonder...........reason that just about everyone believes otherwise. "Simple" answer is that maybe just because just about everyone thinks that how "it should be".
If you were told.........during process of buying new house..........that structural elements of house do not satisfy requirements of building code..........you very likely would at least want more information....and you might want reduction in cost of house.............or you might just walk away and look elsewhere. Yet, many new houses include one or several structural defects...........some of which are reasonably classified as major............and there is no regulatory process set up in New Jersey to inform buyers of this essential information.
One key failure that occurs all-too-often is complete lack of structural design for lateral wind force.............even for large homes near ocean..............or even facing ocean!
How could such ridiculous snafu happen???..............well, watch this "space" for further reporting.
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