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Originally posted by: irishjames23
Sometimes you get what you pay for. That is the point of this whole mess. You hire the lowest bidder and you are not always getting the best job. Sometimes it pays not to be cheap and pay the least amount possible to have a project done. Quality comes with a price. I know there are guys out there that will perform the same task as me for half the money but that in no way means that they can or can not finish the job with the same quality and structural integrity. Many times being the lowest bidder means you are working on very thin margins and any company nows this will result in cutting corners to save the bottom line.
My point is the responsibility still lies with the people actually doing the work - not the people paying them to do so. Qualified engineers design the plans that the contractors are required to follow to the letter. If the contractors don't follow those specs and instead choose to use different materials, or vary in any way from the provided plans, THEY are the ones who are responsible for any failures.
The structural integrity should be the same whether the high, low, or middle bidder does the work - they all get the EXACT same engineered plans to bid on and work with. It's nonsense to suggest that structural integrity would somehow vary based on the size of the winning bid. (Anyway, we do not know whether the contractor involved in this incident was the low or high bidder, or somewhere in between so assumptions should not made in that area.)
The quality of materials used also has to be within certain limits, again based on the provided engineering specs and on building regulations. Corners can only be cut within the allowed range of limits for the materials. Using materials from the lower end of the allowed range is still acceptable - going lower than the bottom end of the range is not. In other words you can't use a 2x4 where a 2x6 is required.
By bidding on a contract you are agreeing to follow the plans as provided for your stated price - not to "free-style" with them. If you choose not to do so, you, the contractor, are responsible for any issues caused by your unauthorized deviation from the plan.
The only exception I can see to this is if the original engineered plans themselves are flawed. If they were followed exactly and a failure then occurred, the engineers designing and approving those plans are left holding the responsibility. I would suggest that is a much less likely scenario in this case.
