redmex – Member

Almost all extensions to houses I work on here in Scotland needs an engineer for some reason. A few are realistic but one firm who seem to get lots of work as they are maybe the cheapest in my view over spec , domestic garage floors 200mm deep with 8mm mesh a142 not good enough in their eyes, k9 lintols you struggle to lift rather than universal 100mm x140mm used on so many other openings, their drawings must sail through building control but for builders and joiners costs escalate and the customers wonder why. So I would ask around for an engineer word of mouth average costs but with realistic specifications

This ^

There are a lot of people who over specify however, a good structural engineer will save you money! A lot of people don’t appreciate the structure silently working around them.

My experience of a couple of structural engineers is they over spec massively to be on the safe side. One friend wated to remove a couple of walls in his flat – one load bearing – huge RSJ specified – thats fine. the other non load bearing and the structural engineer wanted an RSJ in that as well. He wouldn’t budge till we ripped the ceiling down and showed him that nothing rested on top of that wall – nothing at all.

Edit – and don’t start me on the ones the council used on my flat. Massive overspeccing all over the place some of which has damaged the property badly by overloading areas and adding many tonnes of weight. I’m looking forward to getting them in court to explain themselves

Can’t comment on the fee per se but I am an expert in construction professional liability and that cap on their liability withhold never stand up in court. Not in a million years.

They can be used but the limit has to be such that it is of some use and offers sensible recourse to the client whilst affording some degree of protection to the firm against claims running away completely. 5 x fee is £7500 which is no use to man nor beast.

On a job like this they could get away with something along the lines of 5 x fee or £100k whichever is greater would be sufficient as £100k would be enough to remedy a house extension even if it went completely wrong but gives the engineers the comfort that they’re not going to be screwed for every penny.

Impossible to judge the quote without full details of the scheme.

Get comparative quotes and ask for a written scope of work from each.

Always amazes me that Clients are so tight on professional fees when this is by far the most important part of any project. People will happily spend hundreds on naff bathtubs and lighting that they can actually see, but will argue down to the last penny on architect’s and engineer’s fees as they don’t really understand the expertise involved and what they are actually paying for.

PS. I am not saying the OP is tight, it’s just a general observation following years in the trade.

Fair enough Andy. As I said at the start , I’ve no reservations at all paying the market rate for work. That quote was enough to raise eyebrows, hence checking on here.

A lot of people here seem to be very excitable about a single storey domestic extension in a standard form of construction. I appreciate things are different in Scotland, but common sense and general principles of building seem to be lacking to me. Arse covering culture. You can do a lot on the back of the Approved Documents, industry guidance and standards, manufacturers data and widely published construction information. It really sounds a very simple build, I hope the BC fee is low.

Greybeard – one of the warning signs is that they felt the need to put that individual tort statement in. Why on earth would they want to unless they’d had some significant problems in the past. Agreed that the limit of liability is completely ludicrous.

Why on earth would they want to unless they’d had some significant problems in the past

We’re all human and anyone can make a mistake, which is why designs require checking; a well run firm is a team effort, which includes picking up lessons learned from outside. You can’t exclude an individual’s liability for negligence (eg, CDM) but it seems reasonable to me for the firm to indemnify their staff if they’ve followed procedure. Otherwise the staff will need their own individual PI cover.

Yes, of course. However, why on earth would a competent professional put in a design quotation a phrase which highlights that they’ve had a significant issue which has resulted in action. They can’t stop anyone taking out a personal claim, it’s just that a client is most unlikely to because in all cases you’d pursue the entity which carried PII, unless of course they’d limited it to 5x the fee!