Building Regulations Parts B - P Responsibility

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John Williamson

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I'm building a single storey extension to my house. I have an architect a separate structural engineer and a builder.

My Building control officer has asked for:
"Full construction specification for the extension showing compliance with Part B-P is required including the foul and surface water layout.

and

Calculations justifying the extent of openings on the proposed extension to meet the requirements of Part L1B should be provided."

So my architect says it is my builders responsibility to provide this, my builder says its my structural engineer's responsibility and my structural engineer says it's the architects responsibility.

Who's responsibility is it and what level of detail do they need to go to?

Thanks in advance
 
+1.
If Building Control is concerned about showing compliance with Parts B-P, what on earth do the plans actually show???
 
Got me thinking, this thread. What do builders use to sketch stuff on now that smoking is less popular.:D
 
The Architect should draw the plans and specify all work and materials so that they, or more correctly the design, complies with the building regulations.

The builder just builds to the approved design, he is not responsible for any design.

If the Architect's design calls for special structural items, such as beams, foundations, or non standard parts of the structure, then a specialist is required to design those. If the Architect does not have that expertise, then the structural engineer is engaged. But then the Architect coordinates the engineers work and incorporates it into the design drawings and specification.
 
^woody^ said:
The Architect should draw the plans and specify all work and materials so that they, or more correctly the design, complies with the building regulations.

The builder just builds to the approved design, he is not responsible for any design.

If the Architect's design calls for special structural items, such as beams, foundations, or non standard parts of the structure, then a specialist is required to design those. If the Architect does not have that expertise, then the structural engineer is engaged. But then the Architect coordinates the engineers work and incorporates it into the design drawings and specification.
Click to expand...
Thanks extremely helpful. It seems that I spoke to a junior at the architects practice who misunderstood the requests and the architect is now on the case with these. So far they had only completed planning drawings so there is much for them still to do.
 
^woody^ said:
The builder just builds to the approved design, he is not responsible for any design.
Click to expand...

Haha if only life were that simple, in my experience the architect designs his idea of the ideal, which has no bearing on the practicalities and the builder redesigns something that can actually be built.
Last year I worked on a multi million pound development where we had every last detail designed by the architects, at the start of the job we were instructed there would be no deviation from these designed details. Well my estimate is that 90% of these details were useless, so we would have to redesign on site. the architects would then charge the clients god knows how much for revised drawings that just mirrored our redesign. Over 2+ years of monthly site meetings I doubt the architects came to site more than 5 times. Was quite an eye-opener for me as it was the first time in probably 15 years I had worked on a big site and things were no different to the smaller jobs I contract myself.
 
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