Study Session with Michael Hanahan of the Schiff-Hardin (now Perkins Coie) lectures

Tomorrow's 6pm ET study session is titled, “Random AHJ rules.” Michael Hanahan of the Schiff-Hardin (now Perkins Coie) lectures will be presenting. You’ll take the first five minutes of class to answer the question alone, but if you would like to get a head-start on that, here is the assignment.

An architect designs a chicken processing plant in Arkansas for a major multinational agribusiness corporation through the traditional project delivery method. After bidding, and at the beginning of construction, several authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs) review the drawings. The building and zoning AHJ determines that, though the building roof surface is under the maximum height limit set forth by the building and zoning code, the top of the roof parapet exceeds the maximum height allowed, and therefore the building, if constructed as-drawn, will be in violation of both the zoning and building code. Further, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) official reviews the drawing and finds that the counter for workers to process meat, as drawn, fails to meet OSHA worker safety and ergonomics guidelines because some of the chickens coming down the line will be out of reach for the workers who will process them. The workstation counters, therefore, will require cut-out notches for each of the hundreds of workers on the production line, per the diagram above. The cutouts are clearly spelled out in an OSHA poultry processing best-practices publication.

Which of the following statements best describes the architect’s responsibility for redesigning to meet these requirements?

1. Because the CD set has been completed, the project meets the standard-of-care threshold, and the project has gone to bid, the architect is not responsible for redesigning to meet either the height or the counter regulation. Should the owner desire a redesign do address the building code issue and worker safety issue, the owner will need to pay the architect for each redesign as an additional service.
2. The architect must redesign to meet the building and zoning code height regulations for free because that is part of her obligations under the B101 Owner-Architect Agreement, but the architect should charge the owner an additional services fee for the worker safety regulation counter redesign.
3. The Architect should, for free, redesign to meet both the building code height requirement and the OSHA worker safety counter ergonomics requirement.

Please don’t post your answer on this thread

The Zoom study session will take place at 6pm ET Thursdays in our Zoom link:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83922907346