I think we have a misunderstanding of what the AIC rating is, I might be wrong but your reply seems to me that your thinking the AIC rating is the level at which a breaker will open in a bolted fault?
The AIC rating is nothing more than the level at which the breaker can safely open a fault at that level without destroying it's self, it has nothing to do with the level of current or how fast in which the breaker will open.
The current level and how fast the breaker will open at a given amount of current is the level set in the breakers design operating trip curve, with adjustable breakers some parts of this curve can be modified to provide a selective coordination, and or GFP's can be added to down stream breakers, but this will only provide ground fault coordination not normal current path coordination (line to neutral or line to line faults).
A breaker trip curve has three areas that are of concern when selecting or setting the breaker to protect the conductors that it supply's, the long term region, short term region, and instantaneous region.
Long term is the handle rating of the breaker that can open as fast as 60 seconds or much longer not uncommon to see a breaker hold for hours a few amps over its rating.
Short term is the area at which a breaker will pick up at extreme overloads that are much higher then the rating of the breaker handle but not as high as a bolted fault.
Instantaneous is the area we are concerned when we do selective coordination, as this is the area where a bolted fault can not only exceed the Instantaneous part of the curve for both the down stream (BC) OCPD as well as the up stream (feeder) OCPD it can also exceed the Instantaneous part of trip curve on the service main OCPD and cause all three to trip which is not good.
For a more in depth article about this here is a good EC&M article that covers it a little more then I can:
Selective Coordination Using Circuit Breakers
In all the years I been working as an electrician, I never fully understood the the difference and or had allot of mis-information that was picked up from others over the years, until I ran into the problem at that theater, it was something the engineers had always handled and I never really thought about it much other then I often wondered why a bolted fault on a 30 amp BC would trip the 100 amp main also which I found out the hard way when I accidentally faulted an AC condenser unit I was working on and was embarrassed when the home owner came out to tell me all his power went out to which I didn't have a clear answer for him, but now I know.
Also the reason why this is a job for an engineer is there is allot of info that must be known such as the thermal characteristic's of conductors to know how many cycles a conductor can withstand at a given amount of current before damage to the insulation of the conductor happens, and a few other things that most electricians never deal with, without this info you can't just start adjusting the dials on breakers or you could have some liability issues that could land you in a court of law after the smoke clears.
. You might ask him to review 215.10 Exception 2 with you.
