Municipalities are increasingly asking for Professional Engineers and Professional Land Surveyors to stamp drawings that could previously be stamped by architects. We see this a lot with small structural and civil pieces incidental to commercial projects.
Municipalities are also adding new documents to their requirements that cannot be stamped by architects including grading permits and site development plans.
As an architect I'm disturbed by the trend but EVstudio is really unaffected because we have structural engineers, civil engineers and professional land surveying in-house. This is a serious advantage for a client hiring an integrated services A/E firm rather than an architecture only firm. If a municipality creates an additional stamping requirement during the course of a project we only have to add more stamps and signatures. With the other 99% of architects, it will require hiring additional consultants and add additional cost and time to the project.
Originally posted 2010-01-14 00:08:54.
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