Avoiding the Assumption Trap: Smart Homeowner's Guide to Structural Engineering

William Reid: [: 00:00:00

Now what we're going to get into is the actual building of the structure and who gets involved in that, and what consultants your architect's going to need. Because one of the first misconceptions [00:01:00] for a lot of homeowners is they think the architect does just about everything on the project, and that's not necessarily the case. So we're going to get into the first doctor of our homes, which is the structural engineer. This will be a little four-episode mini-series.

We'll be talking about the skeletal system, which is your structural engineer. We'll be talking about the respiratory system of your home, which is a mechanical engineer design—HVAC design. We'll be talking about your circulatory system, which is all of the electrical and lighting systems throughout your home. And then lastly, we'll be talking about your waste and water system and who does that.

So we've got four episodes coming up of the doctors of your home. We got the lords of the dirt out of the way. Now we're going to get into the doctors of your home. This is going to be a fun one, and the first one is structural engineering. Let's get into that, because this is the bones—this is the skeleton of your home that holds everything up.

lieve that an architect does [: 00:02:00

Now architects and structural engineers go on the same path when it comes to their education, their credentials, and similar in their licensing, but architects tend to go more on the design side and the creativity side. And structural engineers go more on the engineering, the science, the math side, if you will.

ngineer for the rest of this [: 00:03:00

A structural engineer technically is a person that could design like bridges and high rises and things like that, but just to keep things simple, we're going to call everybody a structural engineer. So what happens is this is a really critical partnership between the architect and the structural engineer.

And they're probably the other than the architect being the primary designer on the project, the structural engineer is right behind him or her that is participating in the design. So what happens with this is as an architect's developing a design—and we'll get into the design process, but there's stages of the design process.

the fold, if you will, early [: 00:04:00

So that's what really happens—there's a coordination effort by the architect with the structural engineer to basically put their two different minds together to make sure that what we're designing is feasible. For example, you may want a large glass wall off the back of your home because you have a beautiful view and you just don't want to have any interruptions.

And that could require large scale windows with no posts or very minimal posts. And as a structural engineer looks at that on the early consultation, they'll be talking with the architect to decide we may need to be using a steel beam all the way across, or we may need intermediate posts here and here.

ign. Now architects are very [: 00:05:00

And then collaborate with a structural engineer and come up with the best solution. So that's what happens with that relationship, and you as the homeowner—the idea here today is to make you aware of this relationship, and we're going to get into some really nitty-gritty details about how to approach that relationship and how not to approach that relationship.

ystem of your home, from the [: 00:06:00

Now, there may be a case where you're actually not working with an architect, a licensed architect to design your project. You might be working with a residential designer who is not a licensed individual, but is capable of designing single family homes or remodels or renovations. And in some cases you might be working with an interior designer to do a major interior remodel or renovation, or sometimes small additions, and neither are really qualified to do any of the structural engineering on a project.

me, maybe doing a small bump [: 00:07:00

Now, residential designers and interior designers will focus on the space plan, the conceptualizing. Let's remove this wall. Let's put a big sliding glass door here. Let's raise the ceiling. Let's do all these things. Let's pick out all the materials and the finishes, but what's really important here is: can you do it? Can you actually do all the things that they want?

g wrong with this as long as [: 00:08:00

Now I have experience in kind of both angles, working with architects and working with interior designers. In fact, in my business for many years, I employed interior designers and residential designers to do all of the design of the project. And then we would bring in an outside structural engineer consultant to actually do the structural plans of the project.

d oversee that collaboration [: 00:09:00

That is really important for you to understand because as we get deeper into this episode, you're going to see that if you get in the middle of some of these relationships, you could be assuming all this liability, and to assume liability where you know nothing can really be a problem and cause all kinds of aggravation for you.

ls, interior walls, you have [: 00:10:00

Your interior designer's not going to know how to design that, and you're going to need to have the proper details in order to convey that scope of work to the general contractor to get accurate costs. So here's some key questions to ask your non-architect designer when you're dealing with them.

Here we go. Do you have enough structural knowledge to propose realistic designs? This question is really important because as an architect designs a project who has a lot more experience than an interior designer, and sometimes a residential designer, most often a residential designer, interior designers can tend to get really creative, if you will, but not really understanding the structural implications of a project.

if they have any experience [: 00:11:00

The next question could be: do you have any structural engineers that you work with? If they haven't already proposed this to you, this would be a question you'd want to ask because as all these great creative ideas are happening, who's going to determine that this really is feasible?

The next one is: how do you handle load bearing wall determinations? So they may have a structural engineer involved. There might be an owner of a company that is overseeing this process, or if you hired an independent interior designer, how do we know if walls are load bearing or not? Who's going to determine that? And the key is you want to determine that during the design process, not during the construction process.

e assumptions that are made, [: 00:12:00

So after a design is conceptualized, what is the process when it's pretty apparent that structural modifications are required? A process could mean that once a concept has been created and accepted by you, that a structural engineer is engaged with and they come visit the site and do their own investigation. They have to be careful here because a lot of structural engineers don't necessarily offer to crawl underneath your house or crawl up into the attic to verify these conditions unless they're asked to.

design-build one-stop shop, [: 00:13:00

I've got a real problem with that when it comes to the design-build business model. And we're going to [00:14:00] get into this in this next episode—in segment two called The Assumption Trap. And this is why verifying these conditions really matters for everybody involved, but especially you as a homeowner because you are the ones that are going to have to pay the price. And you might as well know earlier than later what's happening.

In my years of doing this, even in my own projects, quite honestly, we've made some assumptions early on in my business. We made some assumptions that there were certain conditions behind the walls or behind the ceiling that affected the ideas that we have for opening walls up. And we just made some assumptions. We learned really early on that was a pretty big mistake, and we ended up paying the price.

lty of making assumptions on [: 00:15:00

And what I mean by that is let's say that you went down the conventional path of hiring an architect, hiring a structural engineer, hiring a general contractor. In many cases, the architect hires a structural engineer, but there's a gap in between the architect and the general contractor who's building the project.

a typical foundation in your: 1960

The contractor then prices out the project per the plans, understanding that there's [00:16:00] no additional foundation work required in this one part of the home to achieve this addition that you want to do on the back of the home or maybe a small second story addition. So they price it out like that.

Then the contractor begins a project and the foundation work begins, and they start digging to tie into the existing foundation for the new addition on the back of the house, we'll say. And it turns out that the foundation only goes six inches into the ground and there's no rebar in the foundation, no reinforcement.

I'm telling you this because I experienced this on a project and I was blown away when we opened up this situation, realizing that this foundation is not suitable to tie into, that we had to do some retrofitting in order to make the project work. That's one isolated case that I had. I'm hearing hundreds and thousands of stories like this, and here's what happens.

ys yeah, this isn't working. [: 00:17:00

As a homeowner, the architects don't usually assume this responsibility. They've got all kinds of disclaimers and non-responsibility clauses in their paperwork that exclude them from being responsible for that. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it goes. I get it that they can't just be out there just tearing your house apart. They don't have x-ray vision, so there's certain things that you can't foresee.

o. This is one little reason [: 00:18:00

So that's an assumption that was made on that project. Other ones that can happen are you're planning to open up a wall, you want to take a wall down inside your home and either you've assumed, or the architect or the interior designers assumed that it's not structural because of the direction that the wall's going, and we'll get into those details later.

The problem is once the home is gutted and you look up into the attic where you're planning to remove this wall, and sure enough, it's a load-bearing wall because the roof is braced down onto that wall and holding up the roof. Now we can't just remove that wall because the roof will come down.

h two posts that go down the [: 00:19:00

Of course, shore everything up, and then put a new beam, structural beam in there. This all has to be engineered in order to do that. Now this could be a $15,000 to $20,000 line item that was not considered in the original project. This is an assumption that can—that is made—that doesn't have to be made, and there's different levels of assumption I call.

on the ceiling to understand [: 00:20:00

The earlier example of digging around the foundation, understanding the foundation that we're tying into, understanding the wall type and how the walls are constructed, how the floor is constructed—all of this can be determined.

going to do that part of the [: 00:21:00

So it's going to be kind of your choice if you want—if you are really tight on your budget and you really want to understand the cost 100%, then I'd recommend you open up as much as possible so that you can understand and your designers can understand the feasibility of what you want to do and the associated costs.

Okay. Another value of doing this investigative process is your designers can then pivot if it's too much to remove that wall or you can't remove all the wall or the foundation is just going to be too impactful to add onto the second story across the whole home that maybe you'll add onto the back.

w, because you're not really [: 00:22:00

But this kind of information is many times the missing link to providing quality set of plans and specifications for a project. This is the information that is providing you an accurate cost. And this eliminates those infamous stories of, oh, I blew my budget. Oh, I blew my budget. Did you blow your budget because everything you designed wasn't going to work? It's very possible that's what happened, and that's why you blew your budget.

nditions need to be verified [: 00:23:00

These disclaimers also do not hold them responsible for any of this verification, any of the existing conditions, which I get, but a lot of that can be taken care of in the verification process by avoiding the assumption process and verifying conditions.

is is going to be mitigated. [: 00:24:00

So now let's move into segment three, which is how to engage with a structural engineer the right way. There's different ways that you can do this, and I want to be careful that you don't get in the middle of it too much. So here we go.

William Reid: This is a classic one where an architect will declare that a structural engineer is required on the project, and homeowners get right in the middle and decide they're going to go out and find the least expensive structural engineer they can find or try to just understand all of the options out there.

engineer, bring them to the [: 00:25:00

So you do not understand their qualifications, their capabilities, and their interpersonal skills, frankly, to deal with your architect. And you look at the bottom line, they provide your proposal and you bring them to the table. Why does this backfire? Because now you are in the middle, so you got your architect, you got your structural engineer, and there you are right in the middle and you're expected to do all the coordination.

Now, some homeowners might say I'll just bring them to the table and I'll back out and I'll let them work together. The problem with that is that if the architect and the structural engineer have never worked together before, I guarantee you that we're going to have a little bit of this bumping heads back and forth.

d the structural engineer is [: 00:26:00

Now, if you have a lot of experience as a homeowner doing projects, and this is your 10th project and you've hired four engineers before, you know you could probably do it. I'm frankly, I still probably wouldn't do it, so it could work. If this option one we're talking about, we call it the direct hire. The riskiest path is if it's a very simple project.

So let's say you're just opening up a wall and you just need to put a beam in a couple posts, you could probably handle that yourself. Like I said, if you have significant construction experience or your architect really endorses this approach, which I'm not a big fan of.

on two, which is architect's [: 00:27:00

It's also important to understand the relationship between an architect and a structural engineer. That they exchange files. So they exchange software files both in any of these conditions. It's imperative that they work on the same platforms to be able to import and export drawings and details. So AutoCAD or Revit, or Chief Architect, any of these architectural softwares that they work with, it's really important.

rson and the problem here is [: 00:28:00

They don't want to run the dollar amounts through their books because they're not necessarily making a profit on that. There's a variety of reasons why architects don't want to do that, and a lot of it is because they are just too busy and just want you to make the calls and set up the contracts and that kind of stuff.

You're still in the middle. You're right in the middle of the process and you're in a situation that you are unfamiliar with usually, so I really don't recommend this option either. Again, if it's a smaller project, maybe you can get away with it and handle it, or if you have experience.

time, or maybe they have two [: 00:29:00

Great. This is somewhat of a seamless coordination. Now the architect is going to make money off this, and they should make money off this. This takes a lot of time, and even generating the proposal, the structural engineer generating a proposal, there's coordination back and forth, questions back and forth, clarifications back and forth, but this is what you want.

process where the architect [: 00:30:00

Now you can listen in. You can join in on the meetings to learn and make sure that you're being looked out for. You can do all that kind of stuff, but ultimately, the architect is responsible. That two or $3,000 that you spend just for the coordination time of getting the proposals could save you tons of time, tons of money for wrong details, misunderstandings, and people don't really—they just can't put their finger on that dollar amount. And that's what I'm trying to do today, is there is a tremendous amount of value to stepping out of that picture.

ot going to get that call on [: 00:31:00

So it's built in accountability. It's seamless coordination, it's professional liability. You stay in your lane and it leads to this integrated team approach. I'll say it one more time. The worst thing you can do is get in the middle, force a structural engineer onto an architect and expect them to get along hunky dory. You are now in the middle. You are assuming a lot of the liability. You are coordinating the communication. You were picking up the phone when there's a problem. Now most professional architects still take ownership in the process, so this is where I want you to go, if you have a large scale remodel or renovation, and of course, certainly a new home.

estions. When you're working [: 00:32:00

So you need to understand if there truly is a relationship there. How many projects have you completed together? So now you're getting a sense of if there really is a relationship there. What's the typical turnaround time from this particular engineer? That's good for you to know, just to understand what the expectations are for the design process.

iting the process and making [: 00:33:00

But I was also able to visualize the skeleton of the home and the software. I'm going to have another episode or a YouTube video about this because it's really cool. And so you understanding if there's an integration there and can I visualize the skeleton of my home? The reason this is important is because sometimes you can see things like where beams are going to go, where openings are that you may not have expected.

re going to talk about next. [: 00:34:00

This all goes back to that infamous word of mine: expectations. How am I best to achieve my expectations? To understand what's going on? These are the questions that you want to ask so that your architect knows where you're coming from and how involved you want to be as a homeowner.

All right, let's wrap up this segment. Think of your architect and structural engineers, dance partners. They need to know each other's moves, anticipate each other's next steps, and move in perfect coordination. When you force two strangers to dance together, somebody's going to step on the toes, and that somebody is usually you, believe it or not, the homeowner that feels the pain.

tructural engineers: one can [: 00:35:00

Your job isn't to manage the technical coordination between professionals. Your job is to ensure you have the right professionals who already know how to work together efficiently. That's your job. Your job isn't to be the coordinator to get in the middle of the process, a process that you don't understand.

Let's just talk real quick next about fundamentals of structural engineering. This is really basic, but I want you to understand what I call the three pillars of structural engineering. And a lot of this has to do with remodel work, but it applies to new construction work too. Pillar number one, we'll call it—and that is the lateral forces.

de. And an engineer analyzes [: 00:36:00

You'll hear the word shear wall a lot. Shear wall. You're going to hear that a lot during design with architects and engineers. And what shear walls are: visualize building a wall out of sticks, Popsicle sticks. Just, as you may know, a wall is built with studs that are 16 inches on center vertically, and then there's top plates and bottom plates, and they create this frame.

lywood on the outside of the [: 00:37:00

Shear walls also are tied all the way down into the foundation of the home, the concrete foundation with hardware to hold that shear wall to the structure, the foundation structure of the home, all the way through the floor and into the foundation. That's the rigidity of your home.

tinue the wall out to create [: 00:38:00

The engineer has to address that entire wall of your existing structure, so he or she will be looking at the lateral design there. There's so much more to this, but understand that the lateral forces left or right. There's left to right and the next one is up. Down. That is the transfer load coming down.

Okay, so you've got the weight coming down from the roof, onto the ceiling, onto the walls, onto the foundation. And engineers calculate all of that to understand where posts need to be in inside walls to hold beams, where walls need to be inside the home to hold up roofs, to hold up the second floor, things like that.

coming down that are holding [: 00:39:00

And they're usually braces that come down onto the wall. If there's braces there, then you're in trouble. Then you got to put a beam in where the wall used to be. If your room, if your home is built out of trusses, then you don't necessarily need to do that. But this is where the structural engineer comes into play.

uld cause a building to rise [: 00:40:00

And that's how the engineer designs and the architect design so that structures are held together in case of high forces of wind to lift that roof off. You see those videos of tornadoes where the roof just immediately just falls, goes flying off. And that could be because they weren't originally designed to current standards, of course, because they're all their homes. So that's the idea here is just the basics, the very basics of structural engineering that hopefully helps you.

All right. What do structural engineers actually do? So structural engineers take the conceptual design of the architect's plans, they import them into their software and they begin designing and analyzing the structure to make sure that all of those shear walls are in place, that there's enough shear walls.

ign the foundation system, a [: 00:41:00

That's the first thing they do. So a structural engineer will design the foundation based on the soils report. And then based on the architectural design, and they will determine the width and the length and the depth and the type of concrete that goes, and the type of reinforcement that goes inside the concrete.

Then they will design the floor system. Then of course, they'll design the walls, the thickness of the walls, the stud spacing. The header sizes over windows and doors, and then they'll develop the ceiling joist system or the second floor framing above you and the walls above that and the roof framing and so on.

nd up and they design all of [: 00:42:00

Every single screw, every single nail, the pieces of wood, the sizes of the wood, the type of the wood, the moisture level in the wood, the type of plywoods that should or should not be used. And it goes on and on. And this is what a contractor really needs in order to build your project. And even before that, price your project out.

from a contractor before the [: 00:43:00

You didn't know that. You just got a price like, woohoo. Okay, that's what happens all the time. You can get preliminaries all day long if you want, but your final pricing and your expectation is they're preliminary. Your final pricing is after structural engineering's done.

The structural engineer will then create their own plan pages. So they're usually called the S pages, S for structural, and they're numbered accordingly, and they start with their general notes and disclaimers, like I talked about. Then they start with their foundation sheets and their floor and wall framing.

s of areas where connections [: 00:44:00

It's kind of like an instruction manual on how to build a project. So you can spend, sometimes you can spend close to as much as you spend on architectural design, as structural design. Just keep that in mind when you're buying those really cheap plans online that require structural engineering. You're not done yet when you buy those plans.

All right, so let's talk about the common pitfalls and how to avoid them with working with an architect and structural engineering.

Here are the things that you might hear or that you should know about, and this is like a big part of you getting to know what you don't know so that you don't undermine yourself on your project. I talked about a little bit of this in the Sabotaging Your Own Project episode.

just trying to save money on [: 00:45:00

They definitely lead to delays because there's a lot of questions that come up. A lot of stoppage happens until further clarification is obtained. It definitely adds to cost overruns because further clarification means more details, means more work usually, and more money. And let's not forget safety issues.

If things aren't engineered properly the building could fail. It's happened, so let's not cut corners on the structural engineering. Part of it here are the things to listen for or watch out for. Some of these don't happen very often, but you'd be surprised. Things like when the architect says they'll handle all the structural work themselves.

[: 00:46:00

If they say that, that means that your pricing may not be that accurate when going into the project, and you might be compromising quality and safety issues. Getting a structural engineer involved too late in the project is a big one, because what happens is you go through the step one of the design process.

s, oh yeah, we better get an [: 00:47:00

Or we need to fill this wall in over here. And all of a sudden your kitchen and bath designs are done. You're picking out materials, this is something that happens way too often actually. So getting the structural engineer involved early in the design process is pretty damn important.

So that you are getting accurate costs, that you're meeting your expectations, you might hear things like, we'll figure out the load bearing walls during construction. You should hire your own engineer to save money.

I know this episode's getting a little long, but this is some big stuff that I really want to get to you. So let's talk about critical verification questions that I have for you. And I'm going to go through them pretty quick and I'll try to get these on the show notes so that you can download it yourself.

do to resolve them? This is [: 00:48:00

How will you verify the existing conditions before finalizing the design? What happens if your assumptions about existing conditions are wrong and who is accountable when assumptions lead to change orders? So you're laying the groundwork, setting the playing field, if you will, so that now the architect, the designers, realize that you're not going to want to get surprises.

you're really interested in [: 00:49:00

So during the design process, can you walk me through how the structural plans relate to the architectural plans? What are the most critical structural elements in my specific design? Are there any structural challenges unique to my site or design? How will the structural plans help contractors provide accurate estimates? All right, so these are things during the design process that you can pose to the architect so that you can become involved and educated so that if you or yourself are engaging with contractors to get estimates in your project, at least you know a little bit more than you didn't know. No.

me and how they apply to my [: 00:50:00

Who checks to see if the walls are load bearing and what happens if they are? Is uplift a factor in my area? Are the soils I'm building on suitable? So this gets really good because you are now enlightened, empowered and protecting you to meet your expectations. There they are again.

All right. I have a lot more questions I could tell you about, but I'm going to put those in the show notes so you can look at those on your own. Because it, it can get quite, it's quite involved. Let's just talk about, lastly, as we close up here, how structural engineers charge. Normally, your architect will coordinate that as I recommend, and structural engineers will usually price the project per project.

gh I wouldn't recommend that [: 00:51:00

If you wanted to try to figure out like a budget for structural engineering, they don't necessarily charge like that, but this helps you get a sense of what to budget for structural engineers. And of course, in the Bill Quest application I'm developing, it's going to already be programmed in there for you so you don't have to worry about it.

So remember, you're the conductor of this orchestra. You may not know how to play the violin. But you sure know when it sounds funny. I just love that line. Understanding structural engineering and the verification process gives you that trained ear. But here's the key. Conductors don't teach individual musicians how to play together.

ge their structural engineer [: 00:52:00

So next time in our world of design series, the doctors of your home, we've just covered the skeletal doctor. The design of your home, we're going to get into what's called MEP, engineers and designers, and that's mechanical, electrical, and plumbing. And this is like your respiratory system, your circulatory system, and the waste system of your home.

can ask the right questions, [: 00:53:00

Do we meet our goals? Are we meeting my expectations? Is everybody accountable? I don't want to get in the middle, but I want to know what's going on. That's all I have. I know that was a long one today, but I'm Bill Reid. This is The Awakened Homeowner Show. Thanks for listening.