qualified to do so, but, as I expounded
upon at some length in the previous issue of this publication,
the Rule as promulgated has had the effect of rewriting State Education Law to require licensing by engineering
specialty.
Would that this were all there was where
the City’s headlong rush into mistaking process for substance
were concerned, but, to add insult to injury, the City Council
did in fact pass the intro I discussed at the beginning of the
second piece in the last issue, and the NYC Commissioner of
Buildings no longer needs to be a licensed design
professional.
A few nights ago I attended, in my capacity as
regional VP of NYSSPE, a discouraging meeting of the
Architect’s Council here in NYC, where the discussion centered
on how to respond to this so as to “get what we want.”
That is, the meeting
reminded me so much of the one meeting I attended of the
mayor’s Building Industry Advisory Council the last time I was
regional VP, that I recalled why I never attended another
meeting of that group. At
that BIAC meeting there were about 50 of us around a large
square table, with each interest group trying to convince the
mayor’s representative why it was important for the City to
acquiesce to their group’s particular point of
view.
What ever happened to the fiduciary duty to the
public which is supposed to be the reason for professional
licensing? We in
the design professions, in no small part, got what we deserved
for having accepted that we’re part of a construction industry rather
than having insisted upon recognition on the level which is
given to other learned professions. That is, we’ve allowed
ourselves to become a commodity by entertaining a prospective
client’s request that we lower our proposed fee for no reason
other than the fact that the prospective client doesn’t think
our services are worth what we’re asking.
This is so galling because the only thing we
sell is expertise. When you see the guys on This
Old House talking about systems and equipment they
recommend, they’re not only selling their experience, but
they’re also making a profit on the equipment they install, as
they should, but this hardly constitutes an unbiased
recommendation.
But I digress.
In mid August of 2007, then Governor Spitzer
signed into law what had been Bill S4603/A7746 to allow the
City of New York to refuse to accept or to limit filings by
design professionals who, “. . . knowingly or negligently
submitted applications, plans or other documents to the New
York city department of buildings [sic] that contained false
information or were not in compliance with all applicable provisions of
law . . .” (emphasis added).
So, not only are we just hawking a
commodity,
but now we’re also required to be perfect. And just how does the City
determine that one may have been negligent?
Why, at an administrative hearing. And who at that hearing is qualified to
make such a judgment?
Beats me.
They’ve invented a whole new standard of care,
and it appears to me that the unqualified will be making
judgments about that standard.
Does this mean administrative judges are
qualified to be expert witnesses in cases requiring the
application of engineering principles?
Ok, that may be a
stretch.
Perhaps what it really means is that the
codes which regulate construction have nothing (or so little)
to do with engineering principles that an administrative judge
is qualified to make judgments about such
codes.
Is
it just me, or does this begin to appear a bit absurd on its
face?
When the New
York Post ran a related story just before Intro 755-A
became the Charter change which removed the requirement that
the Buildings Commissioner be a licensed design professional,
one of the comments on the blog about the story raised the
issue that self-certification was like the fox guarding the
henhouse.
Huh? You mean a bunch of clerks are qualified to
tell us where our designs are deficient, but we’re too
self-serving to certify our plans?
Why then does self regulation of the profession work in
all of
Canada,
and in
Delaware , among other
places?
Yep, there we are again as a
commodity.
In early May 2007 Assemblyman James
Brennan (just before the passage of S4603/A7746
coincidentally), referred to a 2003 NYC comptroller's audit
which found errors in 67% of sampled
self-certified plans, and a subsequent 2005 DOB audit of 20%
of all self-certified plans found that 16% of those contained
errors serious enough to cause their permits to be revoked.
Has anyone other than City employees ever
seen the substance of these errors?
I haven’t. I’d sure like
to.
As I’ve been saying for a couple of decades now,
responsible members of the design professions are actually
part of the solution, and regarding us as part of the problem,
may only hurry us to the Atlas Shrugged
momentwhere we become only too happy to let the
Department of Buildings try and fix things all by
themselves.
You may not like the
result.
